,. J HE WORLD WAR 



BY MEMBERS OF 



The American Academy 
OF Arts and Letters 




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THE WORLD WAR 



UTTERANCES CONCERNING ITS ISSUES AND CONDUCT | 

BY MEMBERS OF j 

THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS 

AND LETTERS ! 



PRINTED FOR ITS ARCHIVES AND FOR 
FREE CIRCULATION 



Published by the Academy 

347 Madison Avenue, New York 

1919 



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Copyright, 19 19, by 
The American Academy of Arts and Letters 



Gilt 
Institution 

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CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Henry Mills Alden 5 

The Background of the Catastrophe 
Paul \V. Bartlett 9 

Greetings to France 
John Burroughs lo 

Can Peace Make Us Forget? A Plea for the Ostracism of All Things German 
Nicholas Murray Butler 12 

The Road to Durable Peace 
George W. Cable 15 

The Tocsin 
George Whitefield Chadwick 15 

The War of the Musician 
William Gillette 16 

America's Great Opportunity 
Robert Grant 17 

A Hymn 
Arthur T. Hadley 18 

A Conflict of Ideals 
Thomas Hastings 19 

The Glory that was Rheims 
William Dean Howells 20 

The Incredible Cruelty of the Teutons 
Robert Underwood Johnson 22 

The New Slavery 

Edith Cavell 

The Sword of Lafayette 
Henry Cabot Lodge 25 

Speech in the United States Senate on the Declaration of War 
A. Lawrence Lowell 28 

What Are We Fighting For? 
Hamilton Wright Mabie 31 

Our Share 
Frederick MacMonnies 32 

The World Crisis 
Brander Matthews 33 

Benefits of the War 
Horatio Parker 40 

A Note on German Music and German Ideas 
James Ford Rhodes 41 

Germany's Shame 
Theodore Roosevelt 42 

Extracts from the Speech at Portland, Maine 

His Last Public Message 

Elihu Root 45 

I. Issues of the War 

II. Our Interest in the Violation of Belgium 

William M. 'Sloane 52 

I. Extracts from a History of Peace 

II. Extracts from a History of Democracy 
William Roscoe Thayer 57 

The Shipwreck of Kultur 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Abbott H. Thayer 62 

Henry van Dyke 63 

The Crime of the "Lusitania" 

Mare Liberum 

The Name of France 
Barrett Wendell 66 

A Conflict of Ideals 
Brand Whitlock 70 

Lafayette, Apostle of Liberty 
WooDRow Wilson 74 

On the Threshold of War 

Our Purpose in the War 

The Program of the World's Peace 

After a Year of War 

Speech at Mount Vernon 
Owen Wister 86 

From "The Pentecost of Calamity" 
George Edward Woodberry 87 

Edith Cavell 

A Song of Sunrise 

On the Italian Front 



John Hay 89 

When the Boys Come Home 

Julia Ward Howe 90 

Battle Hymn of the Republic 



THE WORLD WAR 

UTTERANCES CONCERNING ITS ISSUES 
AND CONDUCT BY MEMBERS OF 

THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND LETTERS 



HENRY MILLS ALDEN 



THE BACKGROUND OF THE CATASTROPHE 
In the Editor's Study, Harper s Magazine, February, 1918 



It may seem to some readers of the 
Study that we entertain too exalted 
expectations of the war and what is to 
come from it. The terms we have used 
in our expression of these have, perhaps, 
suggested to many a premature anticipa- 
tion of the millennium as the inevitable 
epilogue of what is so conspicuously an 
Armageddon. 

Frankly, we indulge in no such exag- 
gerated optimism. When we use the 
phrase, " the salvation of all men, includ- 
ing our enemies," we have not meant to 
ignore its spiritual significance, believing, 
as we firmly do, that there is no real ad- 
vance of humanity which does not include 
the whole man. But also we have not 
meant to identify salvation with sanctity, 
but rather with sanity both of vision and 
action. Nor do we look for the complete 
renovation of our human nature or even 
for the complete political emancipation of 
all the peoples of the earth as the immedi- 
ate result of the present world conflict. 

The great hope we entertain for hu- 
manity, fortunately, does not rest upon 
any brilliant and overwhelmingly deci- 
sive particular event, anticipated or un- 
expected, in the near future. Man, as 
mentally constituted and developed, is 
by necessity a planner; but the success 
of his most deeply laid plans is very far 
from being the realization of an evolu- 
tional purpose, while, on the other hand 
a fortuitous happening that seems most 
auspicious may prove his ruin — or, one 



of foreboding aspect rriay veil a happy 
issue. Visible actualities— events or ca- 
reers — await their interpretation through 
what comes after them. So dramatic a 
career as Napoleon's does not, within the 
compass of the spectacle, explain itself — 
its significance for the world is shown by 
the Europe he left behind him, become 
what it was by reaction to his ambitious 
adventure. 

Only hidden spiritual characteristics 
have the power to show forth for what 
they really are, baleful or glorious, im- 
mediately and forever transparent and, 
so, indelibly fixed in human remem- 
brance. As acts unworthy of humanity 
are never forgotten, so sublime sacrifice 
and heroic endurance for the right against 
the might that slays the body, but cannot 
slay the soul, are immortal. »lt is these 
things, not accidental or relative, but of 
our eternity, that count in the grand cycle 
of history and are glorified by the creative 
imagination. No terms can be too ex- 
alted for the expression of these or of the 
hope that rests upon them. 

If the children of the world are wiser in 
their kind than the children of light, it 
is because they seize upon every visible 
means and let no opportunity escape 
them for the accomplishment of their 
worldly ends. They need no inspiration 
from a higher motive; the greed for 
material success is ever present, prompt- 
ing to the most efficient methods which 
human progress in science and education 



HENRY MILLS ALDEN 



has made possible. The humanist, with 
all his larger vision and finer sensibility, 
and even the most eager reformer or hu- 
manitarian, is not often, or generally, 
thus zestful in practical activity. Thus 
those whose aims are mainly external 
gain headway and set their seal upon 
public enterprise and opinion. 

L. P. Hobhouse, in "Democracy and 
Reaction" — published a decade before the 
opening of this war — shows how during 
the last third of the nineteenth century 
England and those other nations of Eu- 
rope, which, in the earlier part of the 
century, had cherished the love of lib- 
erty and great projects of political and 
humanitarian reform, were swept by a 
wave of reaction that, indeed, "spread 
over the civilized world and invaded one 
department after another of thought and 
action." The externalization of life, 
based on material aims, on the new theory 
of evolution, as initiated by Darwin and 
interpreted by Herbert Spencer, and on a 
perverted idealism, nationally took the 
form of extended dominion. The plea in 
defense of British imperial expansion and 
covering the appearance of self-aggrand- 
izement was that this acquisition of terri- 
tory — amounting, since 1870, to "one- 
third of the present territory of the em- 
pire and one-quarter of its population" 
— ^was for the sake of civilization. 

This plea was plausible on the con- 
sideration that "it was the older liberal- 
ism which made the colonial empire 
what it was, and it was to that empire as 
liberalism had made it that imperialist 
sentiment in the first instance appealed." 
Mr. Hobhouse, however, justly depre- 
cates this recrudescence of imperial aspi- 
ration, involving, as it did, all the great 
powers of Europe in a reckless competi- 
tion for the exploitation of the weaker as 
well as of backward peoples, constant 
warfare, and vast expenditures for the 
increase of armies and navies. Secret 
diplomacy and secret treaties throve 
upon intense envies and rivalries. 

The United States of America was saved 
from this species of international mad- 
ness by the fact that she had land enough 



— an empire in extent, which, true to her 
traditions, she was proud of as a free 
republic and as still the asylum for the 
oppressed of all nations. The war with 
Spain was fresh in her memory, fought 
not for aggression but for the emancipa- 
tion of a neighboring island, which, 
tempting as it would have been for ex- 
ploitation by any European power, she 
left inviolate in the full possession of 
independence. The successful issue of 
the war for the Union had, by the ex- 
tinction of slavery, suppressed the chief 
motive for the acquisition by war of new 
territory. Peacefully, or incidentally to 
a just war, the Hawaiian and Philippine 
Islands became territories of the United 
States late in the century and were held, 
as her share in Samoa was, for naval 
reasons chiefly — bulwarks against for- 
eign aggression, and, at the same time, 
points of vulnerability. 

The extraordinary momentum of ma- 
terial progress in the nineteenth century 
had its efi"ect upon all classes of citizens 
in the American republic as in the rest 
of the civilized world. It was shown in 
the excess of plutocratic greed, the aspects 
of which were far more demoralizing 
than those of the aristocratic pride of 
power and hereditary privilege that wealth 
had displaced. This invited the revolt 
of the laboring class through the labor 
unions, which, unhappily though legiti- 
mately, had only material advantage in 
view. Self-seeking politicians sought alle- 
giance with whichever class was the 
more dominant, and especially with 
labor, as yielding more votes. Partisan- 
ship, demagogy, and the more sordid 
forms of socialism advanced hand in 
hand. 

We think that, in dealing with demo- 
cratic countries, like England, Mr. Hob- 
house lays undue stress upon a material- 
istic philosophy as responsible for ma- 
terialistic greed as well as for the growth 
of imperialistic sentiment. Human na- 
ture is capable of enough perversion to 
be a quite sufficient basis and needs no 
support from philosophy. Certainly this 
is true of the materialistic reaction in 



HENRY MILLS ALDEN 



America, where it was not associated 
with any imperiaHst tendency, not even 
at the close of the century, when, as 
events proved, the general progress of 
world economies, political and social as 
well as mechanical, had put an end to 
the boasted isolation and immunity of 
the western hemisphere. 

We also believe that, in the natural 
course of peaceful and unrestricted de- 
velopment, among the liberty-loving peo- 
ples of Europe as well as of America a 
spiritual culture would have inevitably 
supervened upon material and scientific 
progress, making use of this for the full 
realization of democracy, the establish- 
ment of social justice, and the universal 
expansion of human sympathy. Self- 
hood in its eager possession and assimi- 
lation of the material justifies itself as 
normal only as it becomes altruism. 

The twentieth century dawned upon 
a Christendom the peoples of which, in 
the vital currents of their lives, in so far 
as life was permitted spontaneous devel- 
opment, were not hardened by materi- 
alism, but were more open than ever 
before to the tides of human sympathy. 
The humanist movement was gaining 
fresh momentum, and the most zealous 
devotees of science had disinterested 
aims. It was in the more mechanical 
and superficial movements of industrial 
and political, and so-called society life, 
that reactionary perversity chiefly per- 
sisted — that is, in the channels most de- 
tached from the vital sources of the 
popular life. Even here the atmosphere 
of freedom and peace would have kept 
alive reformatory forces, of which al- 
ready there were visible signs, as in the 
relations between classes, the growth of 
cooperation in industrial activities, and 
the increase of publicity in all political 
affairs — until one reached the border of 
a nation, when the brightness of the out- 
look vanished. 

Especially in Europe the international 
prospect was full of sinister foreboding. 
Everywhere national patriotism was a 
self-centered sentiment, as naturally it 
had always been, but not always facing 



so peculiar a complication of conflicting 
interests. Instead of the hopeful oppor- 
tunity offered to a league of European 
powers for fruitful cooperation in the 
interests of civilization, we behold, early 
in the century, two powerful but most 
incongruous alliances, bound to come 
into collision for each other's political 
and economic destruction^ whatever the 
consequences to the world, including 
their own peoples. Only some miracu- 
lous spiritual or social world revolution 
could, by anticipation, avert the im- 
pending storm. 

Some future philosophical historian 
will trace, in the course of civilization 
itself, the actions and reactions which 
for centuries had been constituting the 
background for the catastrophe. His 
readers will doubtless see so clearly the 
inevitableness of issues arising from per- 
verse human systems that they will not 
concern themselves with any attempt 
to distribute responsibility among actors 
so arbitrary and irresponsible as those 
to whom the government of states has 
usually been committed. Moreover, in 
that long view which history gives, the 
evolutionary course of human destiny 
so contradicts casual appearances that 
one is convinced of "the goodness in 
things evil.'* 

The evolutionary interpreter of his- 
tory is, by conviction, an optimist, though 
he indulges in no millennial forecasts nor 
expects in any generation, this or an- 
other, the complete regeneration of hu- 
man society. He hopefully regards the 
recrudescence with every new generation 
of our so perverse human nature, knowing 
that it is never a repetition but always a 
renewal, and confident that, even if it 
happens here and there to exaggerate 
perversity, "things at their worst climb 
upward" or are helped to by the main 
currents of human movement. In his 
vision ruin, vast as it may be, is invisibly 
the beginning of a new order of archi- 
tecture. 

This most ruinous of all wars was pre- 
cipitated by the exaggerated perversity 
of an absolutism that; schooled in prac- 



8 



HENRY MILLS ALDEN 



tical efficiency and in that philosophy of 
the state which Hegel speculatively 
dreamed and Bismarck realized, after 
half a century of elaborate preparation, 
under cover of a peace it boasted to have 
maintained, saw what in its blind mad- 
ness seemed its supreme opportunity for 
world conquest. Instead, as the war 
went on, it promised to be the world's 
opportunity for the establishment of hu- 
man liberty on a firmer basis, in states 
devoted to the realization of true democ- 
racy — the reverse of Hegel's dream. 

The magnitude of the menace to the 
world's liberties from an absolutism based 
upon armed might had so fully illustrated 
itself as not merely aggressive, but basely 
fraudulent and intriguant in all its proced- 
ure, before America entered the war, that 



it brought into bright relief the contrast- 
ing possibilities of freedom and peace for 
all. The only war aim the western repub- 
lic could have was the destruction of Prus- 
sian militarism — but that involved every- 
thing: a guaranteed permanent peace, 
the determination by every people of its 
own form of government, and such a rec- 
onciliation as would insure a cooperative 
reconstruction of Europe. The menace 
overcome, the result, as by an automatic 
imperative, would be, if not the imme- 
diate accomplishment of the world's de- 
sire, at least the opening of a highway 
to that realization. All incidental ques- 
tions, like those as to territorial adjust- 
ment and national disarmament, will fmd 
their solution by the same automatic 
imperative. 



PAUL W. BARTLETT 



GREETINGS TO FRANCE 



Early in September, 19 14, Mr. Bart- 
lett addressed to the Institut de France 
the following cablegram : 

'Indignation contre les actes aUemands 
augmente journellement. Opinion devient 
unanime pour la cause frangaise. Vive 
la France!' 

On the 28th of October he wrote the 
following letter to Monsieur Jose Belon, 
who had acknowledged receipt of the 
cablegram: 

Washington, le 28 octobre 1914. 

Je vous remercie, mon cher ami, de vos 
bonnes paroles concernant mon tele- 
gramme a ITnstitut de France. Vos 
commentaires sont exacts. Non seule- 
ment, en effet, la sympathie de I'elite in- 
tellectuelle du pays est pour la France, 
mais vous pouvez etre assure que votre 
nation possede aussi celle du peuple 
americain; j'ajouterai meme que cette 
sympathie, dans les milieux populaires, 
s'est encore developpee depuis quelque 
temps, et cela malgre les tentatives de 
propagande en faveur des AUemands, 
lesquels disposent, vous le savez, aux 
Etats-Unis, de moyens d'action nom- 
breux, puisque la quantite d'immigres 
Teutons est considerable. 

Toutefois leurs efforts restent vains et 
I'opinion generale se range de plus en 



plus du cote du droit et de la verite. 
L'on commence a comprendre ici que les 
nationalites liberales vivent un des mo- 
ments les plus grandioses de I'Histoire, 
luttent pour un ideal de liberte, et que si 
vos adversaires triomphaient, e'en serait 
fait de la justice et du droit des gens. 
La Revolution americaine, la Revolution 
frangaise et la "Magna Charta" anglaise 
auraient ete des efforts en pure perte. 

Vous pouvez etre certain aussi que 
cette sollicitude americaine n'est pas 
simplement passive. On travaille de 
tous cotes a vous aider. Nul n'ignore, en 
efTet, que la philanthropic, meme chez 
les neutres, a le droit de s'exercer. Tout 
le monde salt egalement que la guerre 
sera longue: aussi je vous envoie une 
circulaire qui vous donnera une idee de 
ce que les artistes americains veulent et 
pensent faire. Nous avons prepare un 
programme de travail productif pour une 
annee d'avance. 

Bien cordialement a vous. 

On receipt of the news of the signing 
of the armistice, Mr. Bartlett sent the 
following cablegram : 

Widor, Institut de France, 

Paris. 
Le cri de Vive la France est aujourd'hui 
un cri de Victoire. La France va revivre 
ainsi que le monde civilise et civilisable. 
Vive la France! 



JOHN BURROUGHS 



CAN PEACE MAKE US FORGET? A PLEA FOR THE OSTRACISM OF 

ALL THINGS GERMAN 



If this war was largely caused by com- 
mercial and economic pressure and rivalry 
as so many persons think it was, are the 
pressure and rivalry to continue after the 
war is over? Will it not be hard for us 
to resume our old economic and social 
and business relations with the arch 
enemy of mankind as if nothing had 
happened, swap goods and exchange pro- 
fessors, condone Gerrnany's sins, and help 
refill her coffers? Shall we at once get 
busy in trying to reimburse her for 
the losses she has sustained in running 
amuck upon the civilization of the world, 
help build up her commerce for her des- 
perate efforts to destroy our own? Can 
we forgive and forget and aid her in re- 
storing her shipping, and enable her to 
get ready for the " next war,'' about which 
she has talked so much, and reward her 
for having paved the bottom of the seas 
with thousands of the ships and cargoes 
and thousands of the bodies of innocent 
non-combatants of the neutral and Allied 
nations, for her sending women and 
children and unarmed sailors to the bot- 
tom, or abandoning them in open boats 
in the midst of the stormy seas at all 
seasons? 

When one has run over in his mind the 
things Germany has been guilty of — the 
long list of her unspeakable atrocities and 
robberies, the deportation of non-com- 
batants, the wanton destruction of prop- 
erty in Belgium and Northern France, 
the demolition of centuries-old architec- 
ture and art treasures, the judicial mur- 
der of Captain Fryatt, the shooting of 
Edith Cavell, the bombarding of defence- 
less towns, the bombing of hospitals and 
the torpedoing of hospital ships, the fiend- 
ish drowning of the crew of the Belgian 
Prince, her sinkings, her ravishings, her 
burnings, her stealings, her l^ing, her 
studied cruelties, her campaign of fright- 
fulness — when one remembers all these 
things and more, does he feel like saying, 



"Never mind; let it all pass; business is 
business, and it will all be the same in a 
hundred years"? 

For my own part I will never again use 
an article made in modern Germany if 1 
know it. I will never look into a modern 
German book. I will favor the exclusion 
of the German language and literature 
from our schools and colleges. I would 
drive every unnaturalized German from 
this country. 

We do not want their ideas or their 
methods. Their ideas are subversive of 
our democratic ideals, and their methods 
enslave the mind and lead to efficiency 
chiefly in the field of organized robbery. 
They are efficient as Krupp guns and 
asphyxiating gas and liquid fire are effi- 
cient. They invent nothing, but they 
add a Satanic touch to the inventions of 
others and turn them to infernal uses. 
They are without sentiment or imagina- 
tion. They have broken completely with 
the old Germany of Goethe, of Kant and 
Lessing, to whom we all owe a debt. 
They are learned in the roots of things, 
but their learning is dusty and musty 
with underground conditions. They 
know the "Tree of Knowledge'' at the 
bottom, but not at the top in the air and 
sun, where are its leaves and flowers and 
fruit. They run to erudition, but not to 
inspiration. They are a heavy, mate-, 
rialistic, grasping race, forceful but not 
creative, military but not humanistic, 
aggressive but not heroic,- religious but 
not spiritual; brave it may be, but not 
chivalrous, utterly selfish, thoroughly 
scientific and efficient on a low plane, as 
organized force is always efficient. Kant 
was a great philosopher, but he had a 
Scottish mother. None of the great 
musicians were Prussians. Luther threw 
his ink bottle at the devil, but the devil 
got even with him and made the Christian 
outlook blacker than it was before. 

From current reports which, knowing 



lO 



JOHN BURROUGHS 



II 



the Germans, one readily credits, they are 
at this moment taking means to increase 
their birth rate by methods identical with 
those of stock men and dog breeders. 
That the German women do not defend 
themselves with liquid fire and asphyxi- 
ating gas shows that their morals are as 
low as those of the men, and that they are 
the victims of the same civic slavery. 

The Germans have not fought this war 
like brave, chivalrous men; they have 
fought it like sneaks and cutthroats; they 
have respected nothing human or divine. 
So far as they could make it so it has 
been an orgy of lust and destructiveness. 
When their armies are forced to retreat, 
so far as they can do it,, they destroy the 
very earth behind them. They have done 
their utmost to make the reconquered 
territory of Northern France uninhabi- 
table for generations. If they could 
poison all the water, all the air, all the 
food of their enemies, is there any doubt 
that they would quickly do so? If they 
could have scuttled or torpedoed the 
British Isles and sunk them like a ship, 
would they not have done it long ago? 
Of course they would have wanted to 
plunder the treasures and violate the 
women before doing so, and then the 
Kaiser, piously lifting his eyes before his 
people, would have again thanked God 
for His ''faithful cooperation,'' and 
again would have prated how he would 
continue to carry on the war with "hu- 
mility and chivalry"! 

A few evenings ago 1 sat down before 
my open fire in hopes for an hour or two 
to throw off the nightmare of the war 
and forget the Germans. I took up 
Dorothy Wordsworth's Journal. And this 
is what I struck in the account of the 
days she spent at Hamburg, in Septem- 
ber, 1798: 

"Called at a baker's shop. Put two 
shillings into the baker's hands, for which 
1 was to have had four small rolls. He 
gave me two. 1 let him understand that 
I was to have four, and with this view I 
took one shilling from him, pointing to it 
and to two loaves, and at the same time 
offering it to him. Again 1 took up two 



others. In a savage manner he half 
knocked the rolls out of my hand, and 
when I asked him for the other shilling he 
refused to return it, and would neither 
suffer me to take bread nor give me back 
my money, and on these terms 1 quitted 
the shop. I am informed that it is the 
boast and glory of these people to cheat 
strangers, that when a feat of this kind is 
successfully performed the man goes from 
the shop into his house, and triumphantly 
relates it to his wife and family. The 
Hamburger shopkeepers have three sorts 
of weights, and a great part of their skill 
as shopkeepers consists in calculating 
upon the knowledge of the bu}-er, and 
suiting him with scales accordingly." 

Here, more than a hundred years ago, 
we see the same grasping, insolent, un- 
scrupulous bully that we know today. 

The indictment of the wretches could 
be made much stronger and longer. But 
enough. Individually they are below the 
Turks; collectively they are on a par 
with their ancestral Huns. " Blood will 
tell." It is time they were barred out of 
the family of decent, self-respecting 
nations; at least that the doors were closed 
against them for two generations. We 
have got along three }'ears and more 
without their goods or their markets, 
why can we not continue to go on 
without them? We are an inventive 
people; they are not. We shall soon 
find ways to supply ourselves with all 
needful things that have heretofore come 
from that country. Under pressure we 
shall improve on them all. One of our 
greatest practical chemists says he has 
found a way to extract potash from the 
feldspar of granite rocks on a scale and 
at a cost easily to compete with German 
konite. Let the government see to it 
that it is done. If we cannot yet make 
chemicals and d}estuffs to compete with 
the Germans, let us go in sackcloth and 
ashes until we can. 

At any rate, let us not fraternize with 
nations who, in character and conduct, 
are on a par with those desperadoes of 
whom in civic life we rid ourselves by the 
aid of the sheriff and the hangman. 



NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER 



THE ROAD TO DURABLE PEACE 

An Address Delivered before the Chamber of Commerce, St. Louis, Missouri, 

February i, 1918 



The war which now involves the whole 
world is on the part of the Allies avow- 
edly a war not for conquest, for revenge, 
or for economic advantage, but a war to 
restore the rule of law and to establish 
durable peace. No other war has ever 
been fought for a like motive. This 
explains the fact that it has been entered 
upon by the several allied peoples not 
with shouting, with excitement, or with 
wild demonstration, but with restraint, 
with firm conviction, and with stern 
resolve. The aim of the war is to stop 
war so far as this is humanly possible. 

If in the past, war has seemed to be a 
biological necessity, an essential part of 
the struggle for existence, it is only be- 
cause the world had not risen to the plane 
of substituting moral cooperation for 
physical competition. A materialistic 
world, bent only on profits and on accum- 
ulation, is likely always to be a world 
that plans and invites war. On the 
other hand, a world that is built on a 
foundation of moral and spiritual insight 
and conviction, will be a world from which 
war is excluded by every means that man 
can devise. 

In order to tread the road to a durable 
peace, we must grasp not only the exact 
facts as they relate to the origin and prose- 
cution of the war on the part of the 
Central Empires, but also the underlying 
causes which conspired to bring the war 
about. 

To say that the war sprang from the 
desire of Austria-Hungary to oppress 
Serbia, or from the conflicting ambitions 
of Russia and Germany in Southeastern 
Europe, or from commercial rivalry 
between Germany and Great Britain, is 
simply to delude oneself with superficial 
appearances. It is a case of camouflage. 



The cause of the war and the reason that 
the war was inevitable (as we can now see) 
is a conflict of ideals in the life of the 
world. It is clear now that the old notion 
of a world-dominating power was not 
dead. This was the notion which sent 
Alexander the Great and his army into 
Asia. This was the notion which built 
up the legions and inspired the policy of 
ancient Rome. This was the notion 
which took possession of the mind of 
Charlemagne. This was the notion which 
harnessed to its service the dynamic 
energy and the military genius of Napo- 
leon Bonaparte. This notion was not, 
as men generally thought in 191 4, dead 
and gone and a matter for the historian 
alone. It was first slumbering and then 
taking active form in the minds of the 
ruling caste of the German Empire. 
With them it was based upon a phi- 
losophy of history and of life which made 
the German people, like the Hebrews of 
old, the chosen partners of God himself 
in the subjection and civilization of the 
world. 

When this notion took possession of so 
powerful, so active-minded, and so highly 
disciplined a people as the Germans, it 
became only a question of time when it 
must find itself in a life-and-death strug- 
gle with the opposing principle. This is 
the dominating fact which stands out 
above and beyond all particular explana- 
tions of the origin of the war. The war 
is at bottom a final struggle between the 
principle of world-domination and the 
principle of a group of friendly, cooper- 
ating nations, all equal in sovereignty and 
in dignity in the eye of the world's law, 
however varied they may be in resources 
and in power. 

That with which we are at war, there- 



12 



NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER 



13 



fore, is not a people or a race, but an idea. 
We should have had to be at war with 
that idea no matter what people or what 
race had acted as its agents. If this 
idea of world-domination had been 
adopted by Italy, and if Italy had at- 
tacked the world in its interest, we should 
be at war with Italy. If this idea of 
world-domination had been adopted by 
Japan, and if Japan had attacked the 
world in its interest, we should be at war 
with Japan. If this idea of world-dom- 
ination had been adopted by Russia, and 
if Russia had attacked the world in its 
interest, we should be at war with Russia. 
But as a matter of fact this idea was 
adopted by Germany, and it was Ger- 
many which attacked the world in its in- 
terest; therefore we are at war with 
Germany. 

The road to durable peace begins at the 
point where this false notion of world- 
domination is given up once for all. 
Commercial interpenetration, financial 
control, and military dominance are the 
three forms in which the lust for world- 
power manifests itself. A free world 
made up of independent, liberty-loving 
nations must combine to prevent any 
one of these. The liberty-loving nations 
have almost with unanimity now com- 
bined in this war for that very purpose. 

A false idea is not really conquered 
until it is overthrown in the minds of 
those who have entertained it. What 
we must reach, therefore, is the mind, the 
conscience, and the heart of the German 
people. We must by military defeat 
compel them to leave off looking for new 
worlds to conquer, and turn their thought 
inward to prepare the way for those same 
ideas of cooperation between nations, of 
the sacredness of treaty obligations, of 
the rights of small nations, and of the 
duties of great powers toward submerged 
nationalities, which are now part of the 
mental furniture of liberal-minded men 
and women throughout the world. If in 
1848 the aspirations of so large a portion 
of the German people had not been disap- 
pointed and crushed, the history of the 
past fifty years might have been written 



in letters of gold instead of in letters of so 
much blood. 

It has been plain, since the battle of the 
Marne, that Germany and her allies 
could not win this war. The history of 
the conflict from September 6, 1914, has 
been one of varying fortunes, but, viewed 
in the largest possible way, it is a history 
of slow but sure German defeat. The 
amazing exhibition of military power 
made by France and by the citizen- 
soldiers of Great Britain has been ade- 
quate to hold in check the enormous and 
highly trained armies of the Central 
Empires. Distress, unhappiness, and 
grave doubt as to the outcome and issues 
of the war are now widespread in Ger- 
many and in Austria-Hungary. All these 
facts contribute to the breaking down of 
the zeal for world-domination and in- 
crease the chance of a durable peace to 
follow the war. 

The terms of that peace have been 
stated at intervals for three and one-half 
years past by some of the leading respon- 
sible statesmen of the world. The early 
declarations of Mr. Asquith and of M. 
Briand could hardly be improved. The 
later ones of the Prime Minister of 
England and of the President of the 
United States have awakened resound- 
ing echoes throughout the world and have 
been listened to even by the peoples with 
whom we are at war. It is quite idle, 
however, to talk of a negotiated peace if 
by that we mean a peace that shall leave 
the vital issues of the war unsettled. The 
result would be not a peace but an armis- 
tice. This would last until our children, 
or our children's children, armed to the 
teeth and bearing meanwhile the crushing 
burden of huge military establishments, 
took up again the task that we laid down 
without having carried it to accomplish- 
ment. That would not be a fortunate or 
an honorable legacy for this generation 
to leave to its successors. We must 
persist with steadfastness and with all 
possible speed until the war is defini- 
tively won, and until our enemies admit 
that they have lost in the combat which 
they forced upon the world. 



NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER 



When that end has been accompHshed, 
the world will have traveled a long way 
on the road toward a durable peace. 
While it is true that the coming inter- 
national organization and the coming 
international economic relationships will 
powerfully aid in establishing and in 
maintaining peace, yet after all, the main 
thing is to remove from the world a notion 
and a purpose that compel armaments 
and that eventually force war. That 
notion and that purpose are those of 
world-domination. The cry, WeltmacU 
oder Niedergang, comes from a shallow 
mind and from a hardened heart. The 
alternative to Weltmacht is not Nieder- 
gang. It is rather membership in a fam- 
ily of nations, each one of which is pos- 
sessed of what I have described as the 
international mind. This is nothing else 
than that habit of thinking of foreign 



relations and business, and that habit of 
dealing with them, which regard the 
several nations of the civilized world as 
friendly and cooperating equals in aiding 
the progress of civilization, in developing 
commerce and industry, and in spreading 
enlightenment and culture throughout the 
world. 

Given this, and it will be easy to 
establish and maintain an international 
organization to keep the peace of the 
world, as well as to establish and main- 
tain international economic relationships 
that shall promote human happiness and 
human satisfaction. Without this con- 
dition, all schemes for international 
organization and international coopera- 
tion are futile and will not long ward off 
a disaster which takes its origin in wrong 
and false ideas planted in the hearts of 
men and nations. 



GEORGE W. CABLE 



THE TOCSIN 
From "The Outlook" 



From a night of calm security I rose, 
as did thousands about me, to the day*s 
work. 

But before I could leave my room the 
steam-whistles of all the great industries 
in the great city and of all the steam-craft 
in its great harbor began to blow, to bel- 
low and scream, and roar and wail, in 
unnumbered voices that presently fused 
into one and rolled down through hun- 
dreds of miles of streets, into the open 
country and out to sea. 

I wondered but a moment and then I 
knew! I knew the same uproar was 
sounding in every ear from the Atlantic 
to the Pacific and from Niagara to the 
Gulf, and that it proclaimed the first 
rounded twelvemonth of our nation's 
share in the war for civilization. I knew 
it was our notice to the round world that 



all we have done in this thrice-busiest 
year of our nation's life is but a beginning 
of what we shall do. It was Paul Jones's 
cry from the deck of the blazing Bon- 
homme Richard, magnified by steam and a 
million trumpets of brass, — " 1 have just 
begun to fight!" 

Wild, discordant, terrible, it was — it 
is, for it will ring in my ears henceforth — 
our Tocsin! the tocsin of a hundred mil- 
lion people speaking one wrath and one 
purpose. It was, it is, our answer to 
the great gun in the wood of St. Gobain 
shelling the churches of Paris on Good 
Friday. It stoops to no further mockery 
of argument or negotiation, yet says as 
definitely as human voice ever spoke, 
" In the name of God and humanity, and 
of a just and permanent peace to a free 
world, no treaties made this side the Rhine," 



GEORGE WHITEFIELD CHADWICK 



THE WAR OF THE MUSICIAN 
Addressed to the Sinfonian (Musical) Fraternity of America 



We are bound together by our mutual 
interest in and love for the art of music. 
And now we are united by a stronger and 
more important bond, namely, our love 
for our native country and the sacrifices 
of our members to protect her liberties 
and her Constitution. No gifts are too 
great and no genius is too precious to be 
devoted to such a cause. Some of the 
best composers as well as other artists 
and poets of France and England have 
laid down their lives for the cause of 
human liberty. It is greatly to the credit 
of the musical profession that our brothers 
are so willingly found in the ranks of those 
who are serving their country. 



We should see to it that all of our broth- 
ers who have dedicated themselves to 
the service of the country are made to 
feel that we are behind them; that we are 
proud of them; and that if they are called 
upon to sacrifice themselves for the cause, 
their names will be forever held in rever- 
ence and honor by all Sinfonians. Theirs 
is a difficult and perilous task, and what- 
ever of aid and comfort we can give to 
encourage and cheer them it should be 
our first duty to provide. Let us not 
forget that every effort we make in this 
direction is not for our brothers alone, 
but for the whole country, for liberty, 
and for eventual peace. 



15 



BASIL LANNEAU GILDERSLEEVE 



In the early years of the great war 
there were many Americans who felt the 
drawing of kindred, of friendship, of fel- 
lowship with those who are now our 
enemies. But all that has been over for 



many months. There is henceforth for 
us nothing but war to the end, war for 
Right against Wrong, war for Freedom 
against Serfdom. 



WILLIAM GILLETTE 



AMERICA'S GREAT OPPORTUNITY 



We Americans today should prostrate 
ourselves in gratitude before the inscru- 
table force or chance that places us here 
at this climacteric when humanity is in a 
life-and-death grapple with a hideous 
and bestial recrudescence of barbarism — 
a time when something vital and glorious 
is to be done, and when we have the 
privilege and honor of bearing our share 
in the doing of it. 

That something is to throw our little 
weight, our little eflFort, our little might, 
each one of us, into the gigantic scales by 
which the human race is being weighed. 
This we can do, knowing that in this 



vast emergency every atom of our weight, 
no matter what it is, counts, — that every 
particle of our effort is needed. In 
aiding to swing the scales the way they 
should go we help to rescue humanity 
from a wretched fate. Could anything 
more wonderful have been contrived for 
a people inhabiting this earth! 

Fortunate, indeed, are those who can 
do the greater things. But not a whit less 
fortunate are those who can do the lesser 
things, if they are the best they can do. 
And that good fortune is for every one of 
us. 



16 



ROBERT GRANT 

A HYMN 

O Spirit of Creation 

To whom our fathers pra\'ed, 
Look do'^Ti upon this nation 

Whose sons go unafraid 
Across the mine-strewn water 

To grapple with a foe 
That makes relentless slaughter 

And agonizes woe. 

Protect them, oh, protect them. 

Our darlings blithe and brave. 
But should some fate elect them 

To fill a soldiers grave. 
Give us the grace to borrow 

The gladness the>' express 
To dignif>' our sorrow. 

Redeem our loneliness. 

We thank Thee for the vision 

Enabling us to see 
That peace which brought derision 

Was ruin to the free. 
At last our bonds are broken. 

At last the drum-beats roll; 
Ay! by this myriad token 

Our countr}' finds her soul. 

For now the heathen rages, 

And vaunting in his pride 
Would blot Thee from his pages 

To rule b>- fratricide. 
Oh, give them might to slay him. 

Oh, give us faith to ^in. 
And utterly repay him 

With knowledge of his sin. 

Our flag will wear new glor>' 

Before our bo\s return. 
Its crimson stripes be gorv', 

Its stars like planets bum. 
And many will be sleeping 

Upon a foreign shore; 
Vet still \vithin thy keeping, 

Jehovah ! God of \\'ar. 



17 



ARTHUR T. HADLEY 



A CONFLICT OF IDEALS 

From an Address on the Price of National Liberty^ Providence, 

March 15, 1917 



There are two types of university: the 
English and the German. The English 
type has aimed to promote culture — 
physical, mental, and moral. It has 
developed clean-living gentlemen, inter- 
ested to a greater or less extent in books 
and studies, and with high ideals of public 
service. It has not attempted to train 
them directly for the struggles of life. 
Whatever they have learned in this re- 
spect they have learned elsewhere. 

The German type of university has had 
other ends. It has aimed to promote 
efficiency. It has trained physicians and 
lawyers, engineers, and technologists, to 
the practice of their several professions; 
it has done little for the general culture of 
the students, except as thorough stud>' 
of any one subject gives a man an idea 
of what scholarship means on ever\' line. 
But it has fitted the graduate to apply his 
abilities to the problems of life, whether 
at home or abroad, and to do modern 
work by modern methods in the particu- 
lar field to which he has devoted himself. 

Our American universities were first 
founded on English lines. They were 
originally colleges resembling the col- 
leges of Oxford and Cambridge in purpose 
and in course of study. During the last 
century, and particularly during its latter 
half, German ideas of university educa- 
tion were introduced and German aims 
were given increasing measure of weight. 
A group of graduate and professional 
schools, whose object was technical train- 
ing rather than general training, grew up 
about the colleges, and sometimes threat- 
ened to overshadow them. It has been 
the hope of our educational leaders that 
we might somehow combine the two 
ideals of university life — that we might 



in some way develop side by side the 
general culture of the Englishman and 
the specific efficiency of the German. 

The present war has brought out the 
fact that these diflFerences of universit)' 
organization reflected a difference of 
national ideals. The Englishman's ideal 
is character; the German's ideal is per- 
formance. The Englishman desires to 
be a man among men, governed as far as 
possible by public opinion. The German 
desires to be an efficient part of an 
effective organization, helping it to do its 
work better than any other organization 
ever did it before. The war is in fact a 
contest between these two types; and 
the underlying lesson of these awful 
years is that somehow the virtues of the 
two types must be conjoined instead of 
separated. The English type, left to 
itself, tends to go ahead gallantly and 
loyally but unintelligently. The Ger- 
man type, left to itself, tends to gain its 
immediate objects, at the sacrifice of those 
habits of courtesy and morality which are 
the very basis of civilization. 

It is sometimes said that wars are 
waged for commercial reasons. This may 
be true of little wars, but it is not true of 
great ones. Every great war establishes 
some principle. The wars of the French 
Revolution established the principles of 
civil liberty. The wars in the middle of 
the last century established the principle 
of nationality. I believe that this war 
will establish the principle that character 
and performance must go hand in hand; 
that morals and brains must be conjoined; 
and that a civilization which attempts to 
base itself on either to the exclusion of the 
other is fundamentally incomplete. 



18 



THOMAS HASTINGS 



THE GLORY THAT WAS RHEIMS 
From an Interview in the New York Evening Post, September 21, 1914 



The ruin of a rare and beautiful mon- 
ument that belonged to the world, that 
belonged to Germany as much as to 
France, that belonged to us, to all na- 
tions that revere and worship beauty, is 
vandalism gone insane. The Cathedral 
of Notre Dame at Rheims had stood for 
seven hundred years, through all the wars 
that raged about it, and had been re- 
spected and spared by the soldiers of the 
Middle Ages, so-called barbarians. It 
remained for German army officers, men 
supposed to be cultivated, to have high 
appreciation of the beauties of art and 
of all the fme things civilization has 
wrought, to do this ruthless deed. Men 
are killed in war, yes, but others are born : 
there is no lack of men to people the 
world; but the Cathedral at Rheims can- 
not be replaced. It stood in the after- 
glow of its hundreds of years, seeing 
generations pass away, bidding welcome 
to new generations. It stood a source 
of inspiration to the world. It breathed 



a spirit, something hardly seen, something 
felt. It is to lovers of the beautiful as 
though bome one had forever eliminated 
the colors of the sunset. I say it rever- 
ently, the killing of the Rheims Cathedral 
is like the killing of a god. 

We pride ourselves upon our enlight- 
enment and advancement; we have 
pointed with derision to the unenlight- 
ened Dark Ages; yet this destruction 
has been compassed by representatives 
of a race that vaunts its culture. This 
makes the deed all the more terrible. 
Had it been done by ignorant men, by 
soldiers of a backward, undeveloped 
nation, there would be some excuse. 
Had the barbarians of the thirteenth 
century committed this thing history 
would have stamped them with the seal 
of undying reproach. Yet Germany's 
culture, Germany's progress, Germany's 
civilization places this capstone on her 
accomplishments. 



19 



WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS 



THE INCREDIBLE CRUELTY OF THE TEUTONS 

In the " Easy Chair" Harper's Magazine, August, 1918. 



One cannot, without folly, ask one's self 
if peace will never come, because peace 
has always come in turn with war, or 
without treason to the cause which has 
consecrated this war as no war was ever 
consecrated before, and which must tri- 
umph. Yet the fact of war has become 
so habitual that we can as well imagine 
the lifting of the atmospheric pressure as 
the removal of that weight from the spirit. 
The fact of it wraps us like the casing air; 
it has become so effectively our being that 
we can scarcely recall the different events 
or aspects in which it has superseded 
peace. Can any one say just where and 
when he first saw a man in khaki? One 
can as easily date the preparedness pa- 
rades, now that it seems the exceptional 
man who is in civil dress. How distin- 
guishable in time is the lunge of the Ger- 
mans through Belgium from the assassina- 
tion of our own people in the Lusitania? 
Did two years separate those events, and 
by what successive processes did the 
American mind evolve the purpose of do- 
ing justice upon the murderer-nation in 
our stupefaction from that horror? Was 
there once really a question with many of 
us whether there was not some right on the 
side of the enemy who was as much against 
us at the beginning as now? How long is 
it since the mother who now self -devotedly 
gives her son to the country was singing 
" I did not raise my boy to be a soldier"? 
The change which we cannot dare is no 
more questionable than the fact that the 
last election turned in favor of the Presi- 
dent who " kept us out of war,*' and whom 
we have now eagerly followed into it and 
whole-heartedly trust to guide us through 
it. Was there once actually a mood of 
their madness when the Germans imag- 
ined that we could be taught that their 
barbarity was the ultimate form of civili- 
zation? Just when did the doctrine of 



the German apostolate turn to the insult 
of German diplomacy? 



Perhaps it is the essential incredibility 
of its cruelty which disables the mind from 
separably accepting the events of any 
war and leaves this worst of wars a mass 
of wickedness which no chemistry is capa- 
ble of reducing to its components. Can 
any one say what the worst wickedness 
of the Germans has been? If you choose 
one there are always other crimes which 
contest your choice. We used at first to 
fix the guilt of them upon the Kaiser, but 
event by event we have come to realize 
that no man or order of men can pervert a 
whole people without their complicity. 
There was a moment when we thought 
that this or that sort of German was in- 
capable of the things which they have all 
shown themselves capable of, or so nearly 
all that the exceptions have not appeared. 
There have been rumors of dissent from 
the faith which is always seeking and find- 
ing precipitation in some atrocity, but 
these rumors never harden into fact. It 
seems the doom of a whole people to go 
from bad to worse, and to mislead the 
peoples whom they have perverted by 
their friendship or spared by their cruel 
mercies. The Turk is a worse Turk with 
their favor than he would be without it, 
and it is doubtful if the followers of 
Mohammed would not be better Chris- 
tians than the worshippers of the Old 
German God whom the Teutonic theolo- 
gians have latterly discovered, if they 
were not partakers of the Germans' 
crimes. In their static nature these 
crimes seem to have occurred in mass-for- 
mation and not separately; there is still 
the apparent simultaneity in them which 
there was from the beginning, and the 
continual purpose of evil forbids a dis- 



WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS 



tinctive cognizance of them. The be- 
wildered observance fails to time the first 
crimes in their due priority. Were the 
air raids of London with their slaughter of 
women and children in their homes earlier 
or later than the long-distance bombard- 
ment of Paris with its butchery of women 
and children in their churches? 

What is to change the nature of the 
Kultur which binds its victims in the de- 
lusion of an inhuman patriotism so that 
they cannot change with the passing of 
the days and years? Are they hopelessly 
forbidden to learn from the experience of 



all other mankind that the greatest good of 
life is charity, and with it modesty, so that 
they cannot learn from kindness to them- 
selves that kindness to others is of like 
preciousness? What is the fell magic 
which holds them liege to their oppression 
in a dream of ruthless dominion, and 
makes them as eager to shed their own 
blood as the blood of their fellow-men? 
What has so possessed their souls with 
the love of their own slavery that they 
should wish to die in the endeavor to make 
it universal, and so holds them to it that 
they cannot wish to break from it? 



ROBERT UNDERWOOD JOHNSON 

THE NEW SLAVERY 

(On the Expatriation by Germany of Civil Populations of Belgium) 

Men of Freedom, for whose ease, 

Man for man, some hero died: 
Hear ye, over shuddering seas, 

What the winds have sobbed and cried? 
In the mirror of the moon 
Have ye read the shame of noon? 

Men of Freedom, hear! 

Have ye heard the savage creed 
Of the War Lord's iron hand: 

Though the world's last drop shall bleed, 

Over all, the Fatherland — 
Over honor, over truth. 
Over love and over ruth? 

Men of Freedom, hear! 

Not the Germany we knew — 

Lessing s heart and Goethe's mind, 
Schiller's vision, far and true. 

And the peace that Kant divined; 
But a land of lords and braves — 
Half of masters, half of slaves. 

Men of Freedom, see! 

Of another world are these — 

Lords of war with hearts of lead; 
Boasting of new cruelties, — 

Brine for water, stones for bread. 
Ye with grief and pity wrung. 
These have never learned your tongue. 

Men of Freedom, see! 

Now the latest horror cries 

Unto heaven — and unto earth ! 
Trebly ravaged Belgium lies 

Tortured for the Teuton mirth. 
Was there of the Belgian heart 
Left enough to tear apart? 

Men of Freedom, see! 

By the silent harps that hung 

On the banks of Babylon, — 
By the saints that Milton sung, — 

By the crowns of martyrs won, — 

22 



December, 191 6. 



ROBERT UNDERWOOD JOHNSON 23 

By all human tragedies, — 

By the death that exile is. 

Men of Freedom, speak! 

By the weakness of our great 

Who bequeathed a nation's sin 
To their sons to expiate. 

With a soul, to lose or win; 
By his strength who overthrew 
That despair and held us true, 

Men of Freedom, speak! 

By the red of Serbia's sod; 

Poland, paved with little bones; 
Lone Armenia's wail to God; 

Widowed Europe's haunting moans; 
By the million ills that flow 
From one king's choice of war and woe, 

Men of Freedom, speak! 

By the things ye hold most fair. 

Love of home and love of breath; , 

By the child's faith in his prayer; • . 

By things more great than Life and' Death, ' 
Lest your grave be shamed of ye. 

Speak! — and ... if the need shall be, '■ 

Men of Freedom, strike! j 



EDITH CAVELL 

Room 'mid the martyrs for a deathless name ! 
Till yesterday in her how few could know 
Black War's white angel, succoring friend and foe— 

Whose pure heart harbored neither hate nor blame 

When Need or Pity made its sovereign claim. 
To-day she is the world's! Its poignant woe, 
We thought had been outwept, again doth flow 

In tenderest tears that multiply her fame. 

Oh, something there is in us yet, more bright 

Than Rouen's hungry flames — that could consume 

Jeanne's slender limbs but not her spirit's might. 
Fate still has noble colors in her loom. 

One lonely woman's courage in the night 
Has sealed the savage Hohenzollerns' doom! 



October, 191 5. 



24 ROBERT UNDERWOOD JOHNSON 

THE SWORD OF LAFAYETTE 
(Inscribed to Raymond Poincare, President of the French Republic) 

It was the time of our despair, 

When lion-hearted Washington — 
That man of patience and of prayer — 

Looked sadly at each rising sun. 
In all the freedom-breeding air, 

Of hope and rescue there was none. 
When, lo! as down from Heaven let, 
There came — the sword of Lafayette! 

Our harbors — how they danced with light ! 

Our tireless bells — how they did ring! 
Again we girded up to fight 

Not England, but her German king. 
For here was succor, and the might 

Of one great soul's imagining. 
What wonder if our eyes be wet 
To see the sword of Lafayette! 

Upon the walls where Justice keeps 
The 'swords she doth most gladly save. 

Not one of all so deeply sleeps 

Within the scabbard's honored grave 

But, listening for her call, it leaps. 
To live again among the brave. 

Thank Heaven our naked blade is set 

Beside the sword of Lafayette! 

Not his, not ours, the brutal strife. 

The vulgar greed of soil or dross; 
The feet that follow drum and fife 

Shall tread to nobler gain or loss. 
T is for the holiness of life 

The Spirit calls us to the Cross 
Forget us, God, if we forget 
The sacred sword of Lafayette. 
1917. 



HENRY CABOT LODGE 



SPEECH IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE, APRIL 4, 1917, ON THE 

DECLARATION OF WAR 



No one is more aware than I that 
this is a moment for action and not for 
debate. But, as a member of the Com- 
mittee on Foreign Relations, and having 
taken part in framing this resolution, I 
wish briefly to state why I support it with 
the greatest earnestness of which 1 am 
capable. 

The most momentous power entrusted 
to Congress by the Constitution is the 
authority to declare war, and never has 
Congress been called to a more solemn 
exercise of this great function than at this 
moment. We have submitted to wrongs 
and outrages from the Central Powers of 
Europe — wrongs which involve not only 
injury to property, but the destruction of 
American lives — with a long patience. 
We have borne and forborne to the ver\' 
limit of endurance. Now the inevitable 
end is here and we are about to declare 
war against German}". 

Speaking for m}-self and, I hope, for my 
associates generally on this side of the 
Chamber, I desire to say that in this 
crisis, and when the country is at war, 
party lines will disappear, and this dis- 
appearance of the party line will, I am 
confident, not be confined to the minority. 
Both Democrats and Republicans must 
forget part}- in the presence of the com- 
mon danger. This is not, and cannot be, 
a part}' war. It is a war in which all 
Americans must be united, and no one 
must ask a lo}-al citizen^ high or low, who 
seeks to serve his country in the field or in 
civil life to what party he belongs, an}' 
more than it would be possible to ask his 
religion or his race. As Americans we 
shall all, I am sure, be prepared to give 
to the Executive money, men, and all the 
necessary powers for waging war with 
energy and driving it forward to a success- 
ful conclusion. The President has made 
recommendations as to the action which 



he hopes Congress will take, with which 1 
for one am in most thorough accord. 

W'e have only a ver}' small arm}- and 
we must proceed at once and as rapidl}' 
as possible to build up a large one fit to 
defend the countr}' in an}- emergenc}'. 
We must provide for the future and for 
the suppl}- of men for the Army by a 
system of universal militar}' training. 1 
agree with the President that this new 
arm}' should be chosen upon the "prin- 
ciple of universal liabilit}- to service." 
Our Navy is strong in certain branches 
and very weak in others. It must be 
our business to supply the deficiencies as 
rapidly as possible. Fortunateh' those 
deficiencies are, as a rule, of the kind 
which can be most quickh' supplied. It 
is our duty to see to it that all the mone}- 
and all the legislation necessary for both 
the Army and the Nav}' are given at 
once. 

The President has said that war 

will involve the utmost practicable coopera- 
tion in counsel and action with the Govern- 
ments now at war with Germany and, as 
incident to that, the extension to those Gov- 
ernments of the most liberal financial credits, 
in order that our resources ma\" so far as 
possible be added to theirs. 

I am not onh" in full agreement with 
this policy advised b}- the President, but 
it seems to me that nothing is more im- 
portant than to follow it out. 1 am as 
thorough a believer as ever in the general 
policy laid down b}- Washington when 
he advised the people of the United States 
not to enter into permanent alliances; 
but the man who won the American Rev- 
olution through the alliance with France 
would have been the last to lay down a 
hard-and-fast rule that under no circum- 
stances and for no purposes were we ever 
to ally ourselves with other nations. He 



25 



26 



HENRY CABOT LODGE 



covers this point completely in the Fare- 
well Address, where he says: — 

Taking care always to keep ourselves by 
suitable establishments on a respectable 
defensive posture, we may safely trust to 
temporary alliances for extraordinary emer- 
gencies. 

Far-seeing and wise, he knew very well 
that dangers might come which would 
make a temporary alliance or agreement 
with foreign nations imperative. That 
time has arrived. It would be madness 
for us to attempt to make war alone upon 
Germany, and find ourselves, perhaps, at 
the end left isolated, at war with that 
power, when all the other nations had 
made peace, because we had not asso- 
ciated ourselves with them. The Allies 
of the Entente, as they are called, are 
fighting a common foe, and their foe is 
now ours. We cannot send a great army 
across the ocean, for we have no army to 
send. Yet 1 should be glad for one if 
we could send ten thousand men of our 
regular troops, so that the flag of the 
United States might at least be unfurled 
in the fields of France. I believe that the 
mere sight of our flag in that region made 
so desolate by war would stimulate the 
courage and help the success of those who 
have the same aim that we have and who 
seek the same victory. We can also help 
the Allies, as the President recommends, 
with large credits and with those supphes 
which we can furnish and which they lack. 
We cannot do more in any direction to 
bring this war to a speedy end than to 
give those credits and furnish those sup- 
plies. 

The President has told us that Ger- 
man spies 

were here even before the war began, and It is, 
unhappily, not a matter of conjecture, but a 
fact proved In our courts of justice, that the 
intrigues which have more than once come 
perilously near to disturbing the peace and 
dislocating the industries of the country have 
been carried on at the instigation, with the 
support, and even under the personal direction, 
of official agents of the Imperial German 
Government accredited to the Government of 
the United States. 



I believe myself that the overwhelming 
mass of our citizens of German descent 
are just as loyal to the United States as 
any citizens could possibly be. But 
there is this class of agents of the Impe- 
rial German Government who are ready 
to engage in plots and crimes to the injury 
of the people of this country. " Disloy- 
alty,'' if I may again borrow the words of 
the President, "must be put down with a 
firm hand." 

The purpose of the German submarine 
campaign is the absolute destruction of 
the world's mercantile tonnage, something 
wholly new in warfare. In the old days, 
in previous wars, the ships of warring 
nations were captured, frequently in large 
numbers, as was the case when our priva- 
teers ranged the English Channel in the 
War of 1 812. But it must not be for- 
gotten that, with few exceptions, these 
vessels, when captured, were sent into 
port, condemned as prizes, and again put 
afloat. The total tonnage of the world 
was not materially reduced. But the 
German submarine war, ruthlessly car- 
ried on, is directed toward the complete 
destruction of the tonnage of the whole 
world. Forced into war, as we now are, 
our first action should be to repair in 
some measure this loss to our own tonnage 
and to that of the world by seizing the 
ships of Germany now in our ports and 
putting that additional tonnage into the 
world's service. 

Mr. President, we have never been a 
military nation; we are not prepared for 
war in the modern sense; but we have 
vast resources and unbounded energies, 
and the day when war is declared we 
should devote ourselves to calling out 
those resources and organizing those 
energies so that they can be used with the 
utmost effect in hastening the complete 
victory. The worst of all wars is a feeble 
war. War is too awful to be entered upon 
half-heartedly. If we fight at all, we 
must fight for all we are worth. It must 
be no weak, hesitating war. The most 
merciful war is that which is most vig- 
orously waged and which comes most 
quickly to an end. 



HENRY CABOT LODGE 



27 



Mr. President, no one feels the horrors 
of war more than I. It is with no light 
heart, but with profound sadness, al- 
though with hope and courage, that 1 see 
my country compelled to enter the great 
field of conflict. But there are, in my 
opinion, some things worse for a nation 
than war. National degeneracy is worse; 
national cowardice is worse. The divi- 
sion of our people into race groups, striving 
to direct the course of the United States 
in the interest of some other country 
when we should have but one allegiance, 
one hope, and one tradition, is far worse. 
All these dangers have been gathering 
about us and darkening the horizon dur- 
ing the last three years. Whatever suf- 
fering and misery war may bring, it will 
at least sweep these foul things away. 
Instead of division into race groups, it 
will unify us into one nation, and national 
degeneracy and national cowardice will 
slink back into the darkness from which 
they should never have emerged. 

I also believe that on our entrance into 
this war, under the conditions which it 
has assumed, our future peace, our inde- 
pendence as a proud and high-spirited 
nation, our very security, are at stake. 
There is no other way, as I see it, except 
by war, to save these things without 
which national existence is a mockery and 
a sham. But there is a still higher pur- 
pose here as I look upon it. The Presi- 
dent has said with great justice that 
Germany is making war upon all nations. 
We do not enter upon this war to secure 
victory for one nation as against another. 
We enter this war to unite with those who 
are fighting the common foe in order to 
preserve human freedom, democracy, 
and modern civilization. They are all 
in grievous peril; they are -all threatened. 
This war is a war, as 1 see it, against 
barbarism; not the anarchical barbarism 
of what are known as the Dark Ages, but 
organized barbarism panoplied in all the 



devices for the destruction of human life 
which science, beneficent science, can 
bring forth. We are resisting an effort 
to thrust mankind back to forms of gov- 
ernment, to political creeds and methods 
of conquest which we had hoped had 
disappeared forever from the world. 
We are fighting against a nation which, 
in the fashion of centuries ago, drags the 
inhabitants of conquered lands into 
slavery; which carries off women and 
girls for even worse purposes; which in its 
mad desire to conquer mankind and tram- 
ple them under foot has stopped at no 
wrong, has regarded no treaty. The 
work that we are called upon to do when 
we enter this war is to preserve the prin- 
ciples of human liberty, the principles of 
democracy, and the light of modern civi- 
lization; all that we most love, all that we 
hold dearer than life itself, is at stake. 
In such a battle we cannot fail to win. 1 
am glad that my country is to share in 
this preservation of human freedom. 1 
wish to see my country gathered with the 
other nations who are fighting for the 
same end when the time for peace comes. 
We seek no conquests, we desire no terri- 
tory and no new dominions. We wish 
simply to preserve our own peace and our 
own security, to uphold the great doctrine 
which guards the American hemisphere, 
and to see the disappearance of all wars 
or rumors of wars from the East, if any 
dangers there exist. What we want most 
of all by this victory which we* shall help 
to win is to secure the world's peace, 
broad-based on freedom and democracy, 
a world not controlled b>' a Prussian 
military autocracy, by Hohenzollerns and 
Hapsburgs, but by the will of the free 
people of the earth. We shall achieve 
this result, and when we achieve it, we 
shall be able to say that we have helped 
to confer great blessings upon mankind, 
and that we have not fought in vain. 



A. LAWRENCE LOWELL 



WHAT ARE WE FIGHTING FOR? 
Article in The Independent, March ii, 1918 



The United States entered the war 
because one of the chief objects of every 
government must be to protect the Hves 
and property of its citizens from destruc- 
tion, in violation of the rules of interna- 
tional law and the principles of humane 
civilization. After the renewal of sub- 
marine warfare, conducted in disregard of 
law and humanity, a great nation that did 
not protect its citizens would have been 
an object of scorn whose rights could be 
disregarded in future. We should have 
been a certain mark for aggression by 
any power whose desires might conflict 
with ours; and especially by Germany as 
soon as she had recovered her strength, 
and found her ambitions blocked in 
Africa and Asia. Nor should we have 
had a claim to expect aid or sympathy 
from any nation in resisting an attack 
upon our shores, or upon Central or South 
America. 

The aims of the United States in de- 
claring war were strictly defensive. We 
did not take part with the Allies to ob- 
tain any benefit, territorial, economic or 
financial, for ourselves or for any other 
country. But if so, why does our Presi- 
dent, together with Mr. Lloyd George, 
tell the world that the terms of peace 
must include changes of territory among 
the belligerents? There are two reasons 
for this, not unconnected, although rest- 
ing on distinct principles. 

The first is that having been drawn 
into the war in defense of our own citi- 
zens we do not propose to stop, if we can 
help it, until justice has been done to 
the peoples who have now become our 
allies. When a man takes part in a fight 
he inevitably makes, to some extent, 
common cause with the other men who 
are fighting on his side, and he cannot 
honorably leave them in the lurch. If a 
robber has picked my pocket of ten dol- 



28 



lars, and 1 find that another man from 
whom he has stolen one thousand dollars 
is pursuing him, if I join in the pursuit, 
and after the other man becomes ex- 
hausted, or gets a knock-out blow, the 
robber turns on me, can I say to him, 
"Give me back my ten dollars and you 
may keep the money of the other man?" 
We have now made common cause in 
arms with the Allies, and we cannot desert 
them by backing out and leaving them to 
suffer from injuries unredressed. If Ger- 
many had, either before or during the war, 
taken part of our territory, or ravaged 
it, we should have a mean opinion of our 
allies if they made peace with her without 
insisting on restoration and reparation 
for us; and we cannot do to others what 
we should blame and despise them for 
doing to us. This apphes to our demand 
for restitution and indemnity in the cases 
of Belgium, Serbia and France. It covers 
also the case of Alsace-Lorraine, taken by 
force, or under the duress of force, in 
1870. 

Moreover, this war, in whatever way 
it ends, will certainly be followed by 
some reorganization of Europe, apart 
from the restitution of the territory of 
our allies. Being a party to the war, we 
cannot shirk the responsibility of seeing 
that the peace which concludes it is 
right and just. We cannot say that 
whether the changes made involve op- 
pression and injustice or not is of no 
interest to us, and no affair of ours. As 
a civilized and free nation we must throw 
our weight into the scale for the libera- 
tion of oppressed peoples and the fair 
treatment of all peoples, and it is well 
that we should say so now. 

The second reason for including ter- 
ritorial adjustments among the terms 
of peace comes from the fact that we are 
not fighting for terms at all. If Ger- 



A. LAWRENCE LOWELL 



29 



many were to offer to abandon her sub- 
marine warfare during the remainder 
of the conflict we could not now with- 
draw, because it would mean merely a 
desperate attempt to detach another bel- 
ligerent, not a recognition of neutral 
rights or a renunciation of the menace 
of aggressive militarism. Even if she 
were to offer any terms the Allies pleased, 
purely in order to recover her strength 
and begin war again under more favorable 
conditions, they could not be accepted, 
because we are in fact fighting to pre- 
vent the recurrence to ourselves and to 
mankind of such a calamity as this war. 
We are not fighting for the sake of war, 
but to prevent war. We are fighting 
that such things as have happened within 
the last three years shall, if we can help 
it, never occur again. In any peace, 
therefore, we must seek to remove the 
causes of future wars. 

Now among the chief causes of recent 
wars have been the aspirations of people 
of the same race, or rather who speak the 
same language, to unite as a nation and 
be free from the domination of another 
race. It is interesting to consider the 
influence of this motive in the great strug- 
gles that have occurred in Europe, let us 
say since the Crimean War. In the 
period immediately succeeding, a number 
of wars arose from the efforts to create a 
united Italy and a united Germany. The 
first of these conflicts was that between 
France and Austria in 1859. The osten- 
sible cause of that war, and to a great 
extent the underlying motive that pro- 
voked it, was the desire to free the Italians 
in Lombardy and Venice from the Aus- 
trian yoke. Five years later came the 
war of Prussia and Austria against Den- 
mark. It was only a prelude to the 
Austro-Prussian War of 1866 which had 
as its occasion a quarrel over the admin- 
istration of the duchies wrung from Den- 
mark, but which was really carefully 
planned to drive Austria out of the loose 
Germanic Confederation and unite Ger- 
many in a single federal body under the 
hegemony of Prussia. The last of this 
series of wars, was the Franco-Prussian 



War of 1870, where the quarrel arose 
nominally over a candidate for the throne 
of Spain, but which was in fact provoked 
by Bismarck in order to complete the 
union of the German states in what is now 
the German Empire. Before a decade 
had passed, began the first of the wars 
caused by the efforts of the Christian 
Slavs in the Balkans to rid themselves of 
the rule of the Turk. In 1876 there 
began the attempt to free Bulgaria, 
which was followed by the war between 
Russia and Turkey. From that time 
there was no war between European 
nations on any large scale until the first 
of the late Balkan wars in 19 12. This 
was, of course, an attempt to carry far- 
ther, and indeed to complete, the process 
of liberating the Balkans from the control 
of the Turk; and it was succeeded by the 
second Balkan war, a quarrel between 
the victors over the spoils, turning in 
part on the question whether the people 
of Macedonia were essentially Bulgarian 
or not. Finally the occasion and the 
pretext, though not the real underlying 
cause, of the present war was the condi- 
tion of the Serbian peoples, part of whom 
lived in Serbia and part under the rule of 
Austria-Hungary. 

If the question of race has been a 
source of war in Europe for two gen- 
erations we cannot expect it to disappear 
in the future unless racial aspirations are 
reasonably satisfied; for it has grown up 
with democracy and the spread of popu- 
lar education. So long as government 
was conducted exclusively by a throne 
and aristocracy, the ruling class was con- 
strained to speak one language, that of 
the court and of polite society. All cul- 
tivated people in the land were educated 
in the same literary tongue, which was 
naturally used in official transactions. 
The uneducated classes talked their own 
dialects and cared little what their rulers 
spoke. They have not always objected 
even when these men affected a foreign 
culture. Frederick the Great thought 
himself a French litterateur and spelled 
his name like a Frenchman. But when 
popular elections were introduced, and 



30 



A. LAWRENCE LOWELL 



still more when primary schools became 
universal, the question of language as- 
sumed a far greater importance. Then 
the matter of race was brought to the 
forefront. The Czechs in Austria, for 
example, must insist that their children 
shall be taught in Czech, and that their 
language shall not be excluded from public 
affairs, or their people will inevitably be 
Germanized. The sentiment has, no 
doubt, in some cases been exaggerated 
until men of letters have raised a dialect 
into a language, and local patriotism has 
inspired a small branch of a great race 
with a feeling of distinct nationality. 
Yet the sentiment is real, and if it is not 
given political expression, and the people 
who hold it are not allowed the means of 
economic development, it is certain to 
remain a source of agitation and a prob- 
able cause of war. A prudent man does 
not keep in his house combustible ob- 
jects where they are liable to be set on 
fire. We are not fighting this war to 
prepare materials for another, or to leave 
in the world explosive elements, if it is 
possible to avoid doing so. A great war 
may start from the discontent of a small 
people; and if the condition of the large 
European countries should remain un- 
changed after peace is concluded, it 
night well be, for example, that a future 
revolt of the Czechs or the Croats would, 
from sympathy or policy provoke the 
interference of some great power, as the 
ultimatum to Serbia provoked the inter- 
vention of Russia in July, 1914. Europe 
might be set ablaze by race questions in 
Austria-Hungary, as she has been by 
troubles in the Balkans; and such a source 
of war ought to be foreseen and prevented. 
The President's statements about ter- 
ritorial changes have, therefore, the 
same object as his declarations about a 



league of nations. Neither of them has 
the slightest punitive intent. Both are 
designed to prevent future wars, by re- 
moving causes of strife, by allowing free 
play to national development on the 
part of peoples great and small, and by 
restraining war until every other means 
of settlement has been exhausted. 

Three years ago it was necessary to 
argue that the United States could no 
longer maintain a position of complete 
isolation, that she must assume the du- 
ties and responsibilities which her growth 
and the increasing rapidity of transporta- 
tion across the ocean had cast upon her; 
and the burden of proof was upon him 
who asserted that our traditional policy 
had been outgrown. But we have not 
been able to preserve our isolation in this 
war, and it has become our obvious 
interest and duty to see that another 
preventable war does not break out, into 
which we shall again be drawn. To do 
this we must insist upon terms of peace 
that will remove as many of the causes 
of war as possible; and we must form with 
other countries having the same object in 
view, a league of nations which will 
secure the submission of international 
controversies to a tribunal or a body of 
conciliators, and which will provide a 
deliberative body for the formulation of 
international law and the public discus- 
sion of international problems. We must 
be prepared to join with the other great 
nations of the earth in compelling, by 
force if necessary, a resort to these peace- 
ful methods for the settlement of dis- 
putes, before a recourse to violence. The 
object in stating our terms is not an 
immediate, but a permanent, peace, and 
while we can maintain a force in the field 
we can demand nothing less. 



HAMILTON WRIGHT MABIE* 



OUR SHARE 
Editorial Article in The Outlook, June i6, 191 5 



It has been said that when the sun went 
down on the 3 1 st of July last it set for the 
last time on the world that was familiar; 
on the first day of August it rose on a new 
world. The changes wrought by war are 
already incalculable, and they have only 
begun. Whatever forms they may take 
— political, social, industrial — they are 
certain to be fundamental, perhaps rev- 
olutionary. The readjustments, when 
they come, will not be mere diplomatic 
compromises; they will be vital, radical, 
and far-reaching. Society will not count 
its losses, gird up its loins, and go on 
again in the old way. It is passing 
through one of the deepest, perhaps the 
deepest, experience in its history, and it 
will come out of that experience not only 
greatly impoverished but changed in 
spirit. The iron is entering into its soul. 

Such experiences never leave nations 
as they fmd them; nor do they leave indi- 
viduals as they fmd them; some deep- 
going change always registers such vast 
catastrophic events in history. So far 
the field of military operations has been 
on the far side of one or other of the 
friendly oceans which separate us from 
Europe and Asia, but the tragic experience 
is part of the life of every thoughtful 
man and woman in America. We do not 
hear the thunder of cannon, but the flash 
of the guns below the horizon reflected in 
the sky above us makes us aware that a 
great tempest is sweeping over the earth, 
and that possessions that belong to the 
whole world are in peril, if not already 
destroyed. If this stupendous experi- 
ence does not touch us, it is because we 
are mentally insensitive or spiritually 
dead. There are those who would take 
refuge in the cabaret if the bells were 
tolling continuously for the dead in a 



plague-smitten city; but the vast majority 
of men and women live with their fellows 
and share their fortunes. Whether we 
consciously share them or not, those for- 
tunes are our fortunes; we may shut our 
eyes, but we cannot shut our souls to the 
pain, sorrow, and tremendous disturb- 
ances which are agitating the world as a 
storm that sweeps from continent to con- 
tinent, breaks up the fountains of the 
deep and sends the universal ocean foam- 
ing and thundering half around the globe. 

Those Americans are to be pitied whose 
chief anxiety is that we may be kept out 
of the struggle and find in it a golden 
opportunity to push forward the pros- 
perity of the Nation. That we may be 
spared the duty of entering the field of 
war with arms in our hands is the prayer 
of the whole Nation, but that we should 
be spared participation in the sorrow and 
loss of our fellow-nations in order that we 
may profit by their misfortunes would be 
the prayer of a base and blind selfishness. 
The intense preoccupation of our neigh- 
bors beyond the sea may give a great 
impulse to American industry and enter- 
prise, but we can safely accept prosperity 
from the misfortunes of others only when 
our hearts are clean of every desire to 
shape our National policy to an end so 
selfish and so hateful to the spirit of 
democracy. 

To be able to keep out of the war with- 
out sacrificing the higher interests of 
humanity is the eager desire of many 
anxious people, but to escape the sorrow, 
pain, and renovating power of a great 
human experience would be to miss one 
of the greatest lessons ever set for men 
to learn. Whether we will or not, we 
are sharing the fortunes of this world- 



* Mr. Mabie died December 31, 19 16. 
31 



32 



FREDERICK MACMONNIES 



shaking conflict, and it will not leave us 
as it found us; at the end we shall be a 
nobler or a meaner Nation. We are 
being tested as truly as if our armies were 
in the field. Every man is being tested 
as truly as if his individual fortunes were 
involved in the issue. Shall we think 
primarily of our own safety and comfort, 



or shall we think first and always of the 
interests of humanity? Shall we cling 
to prosperity and the ease and luxury 
that come with it as the ends of life, or 
shall we learn from the appalling destruc- 
tion of material values that these are as 
dust in the scales when the soul of a nation 
or of an individual is being weighed? 



FREDERICK MACMONNIES 



THE WORLD CRISIS 



It would not have occurred to any one 
strolling in Piccadilly or on a Paris boule- 
vard in 191 3, wrapped in the sense of 
security afforded by well-ordered streets, 
that a year later the main preoccupation 
of three-quarters of the inhabitants of 
the globe w^ould be to prevent a horde of 
savages from destroying the world, mor- 
ally and physically. 

To the mind accustomed to modernity, 
it all seemed so settled. The few liv- 
ing savages had been attended to by 
missionaries and were supplied with 
phonographs and the blessings of civil- 
ization. Sitting Bull was dead. Tamer- 
lane, the Huns, the destruction of Rome, 
Zulus, scalpings, disembowelings, poison- 
ings and piracies were mere details of a 
glorious and bloody past. A few recal- 
citrant specimens of the savage could 
perhaps be dislodged on the Zambesi or 
possibly in Cochin China. 

Who could suspect that under the 
grey tunic topped by the pompous gilded 
helmet was a bloodthirsty pitiless Hun, 
more dangerous than his half-clad ances- 



tors, for he was equipped with science and 
armed with modern miracles invented 
by civilization for her own beneficent 
purposes. These his mediaeval soul with 
savage cunning has turned to barbaric 
usage. Filled with false philosophy and 
fatuous egotism, he has organized to turn 
back the dial of progress five hundred 
years. 

We have waked up late to our danger, 
and for our tardy rising we must make 
amends or do the bidding of a conqueror. 
Graft, ambition, greed, sloth, words must 
be put aside, if we would save the world 
for anything, let alone for democracy. 

But win we must, and when once more 
we feel the security of order and justice, 
then every bright life extinguished, every 
spark of unseen heroism, every brave 
achievement, each precious relic of a 
devout past relentlessly shot to pieces 
will be a sacrifice not made in vain, for 
that vast funeral pyre of hopes, loves and 
ambitions will be a beacon to light 
forever the highroad of progress toward 
permanent Peace and Liberty. 



BRANDER MATTHEWS 



BENEFITS OF THE WAR 
Article in Munsey's Magapne for February, 191 8 



There is a French proverb which de- 
clares that every man has the defects 
of his quaUties and the quahties of his 
defects. That is to sa>-, if he has a gentle 
spirit, he is quite possibly of a yielding 
nature; and if he is reputed to be ob- 
stinate, he is not likely to be infirm of 
purpose. 

A similar maxim might have been 
minted in regard to events. The}' are 
rarely either wholly good or wholly evil 
— or, at least, if the\- are good, the>' m.a}' 
have remote and unexpected conse- 
quences which are not altogether satis- 
factory; and if they are evil, the>' ma>' 
none the less bring about unforeseen re- 
sults which ultimately prove to be ad- 
vantageous. 

In the present world war it is difficult 
for us to discover anything but hideous 
horrors, rapine and ruin, mutilation, 
death, and that moral suffering which is 
even worse than death. Over against 
all the diabolical misdeeds which have 
brought these malignant terrors is the 
sublime spectacle of human heroism, of 
duty done nobly and simply, of selfish- 
ness conquered, and of self-sacrifice made 
the law of life. It is an appalling price 
that humanity has had to pay for this 
encouraging disclosure of its finer and 
sterner possibilities; and yet the dis- 
closure itself is beyond price. Perhaps 
in the future it may prove to be worth all 
it has cost. 

This uncovering of the soul of man in 
all its elevation and all its power is the 
first and the most obvious of the benef- 
icent by-products of the world war. It 
is unquestionably the most important, 
but it does not stand alone. It is onl\- 
the first and foremost of a host of things 
brought to light as direct or indirect con- 
sequences of this protracted battle be- 

3 33 



tween democratic civilization and auto- 
cratic barbarism. 

Some of these things are obvious 
enough; and some ma\- be obscure, need- 
ing to be elucidated in detail. Some of 
them are physical, some are moral, and 
some are mental. Some of them soar 
aloft in the world of ideas and of ideals, 
and some of them linger below on the 
level of the m.ereh" material and economic 
necessities. And they are so man>' and 
so manifold and so diverse that the\- can- 
not be catalogued, even if they could all 
be perceived at the present time. 

What it is possible to do now is to single 
out a few of the beneficent results of this 
war which have most significance for us 
here in America, separated b\' a thousand 
leagues of water from the devastation and 
the desolation of the actual battle-field. 

First of all, this sudden outbreak of the 
conflict between the t^vo Kaisers and 
the self-governing peoples allied against 
Kaiserism, the continuation of the com- 
bat \ear after year ^^^th the resulting 
adherence of nation after nation to the 
one side or to the other, until it is now 
far easier to count the few peoples ^^■ho 
insist upon remaining neutral than it is 
to call the roll of those who have joined 
themselves together resolved to make an 
end of the menace of militarism — all this 
has made plain as never before the ex- 
traordinar}* interdependence of ever\- 
nation upon almost every other nation. 

The races which are in the possession of 
fertile soil for agriculture need the foreign 
markets where their corn can be sold. 
The nations best equipped for manu- 
facturing need peaceful freedom to bring 
in this com as food for their toilers. 
They also need it to import the raw ma- 
terials without which their factories 
must stand idle. 



34 



BRANDER MATTHEWS 



Switzerland, for example, is at peace 
with the whole world, and is resolute to 
defend its neutrality to the end; but 
Switzerland is entirely surrounded by 
nations at war, and therefore the Swiss 
find it difficult to get the food and the 
fuel they require, and almost impossible 
to export the few wares that they are 
still able to manufacture. Through no 
fault of its own, Switzerland has been 
made to suffer almost as severely as if it 
had been one of the sharers in the fighting. 

Germany, until it chose to begin its 
struggle for supremacy, was glad to 
supply other nations with potash, which 
is an essential in modern scientific agri- 
culture. On the other hand, Germany 
was glad to import the nitrates which are 
also an essential in modern scientific 
agriculture, and which were imperatively 
demanded by her relatively infertile soil. 
Her defeat may be brought about finally, 
not by the destruction or surrender of 
her armies, but by her failure to feed 
her millions of soldiers because of her 
inability to get the nitrates without 
which the intensive culture of her fields 
is impossible. Because her merchant 
marine has been swept from the seas, 
Germany may be deprived, not only of 
the tea and the coffee her ships used to 
bring from distant lands, but even of 
the potatoes she was accustomed to raise 
abundantly on her own farms. 

Long before we entered into the war 
ourselves, we were made to appreciate 
how dependent we were upon other na- 
tions, in spite of our immensely varied 
territory, our diversified population, and 
our inventive ingenuity. We could im- 
port nitrates, but we were deprived of 
potash. We had been wont to vaunt our- 
selves as a self-sufficing nation, able to 
produce within our own borders all that 
we might need; but within a month after 
the outbreak of hostilities we discovered 
the disadvantages of having allowed 
Germany to manufacture many of our 
chemicals for us — chemicals needed for 
medicinal purposes, for dyeing, and for 
the making of explosives. It was well 
that we should be awakened by this un- 



welcome disclosure, for it has made us 
eager to establish industries which will 
render us as independent of the foreigner 
as we had fondly believed ourselves to be. 

Nor are these the only factories which 
the war has forced us to erect. We have 
had to build countless plants for the mak- 
ing of munitions and explosives, small 
arms and artillery. The European na- 
tions with whom we are now in alliance 
were better prepared for war than we 
should have been if we had been brought 
into the conflict at the beginning; but 
no one had foreseen the decisive impor- 
tance of an indisputable superiority of 
shells and shrapnel, bombs and hand- 
grenades. As the Allies could not manu- 
facture these things for themselves fast 
enough, they came to us; and the ex- 
pansion of our munition-making in- 
dustry was so rapid and so elaborate that 
when at last the United States did join 
the forces fighting to make the world 
safe for democracy, we were in a position 
to equip our new armies speedily and 
satisfactorily. 

Not only have we now adequate means 
for preparing ourselves for defense, but we 
have seen the danger of not having at all 
times the factories, the machines, and the 
organizations needed for self -protection. 
We are not likely hereafter to leave our- 
selves defenseless against the treacherous 
attack of an unscrupulous foe. 

We must hereafter keep ourselves fit 
for service, since we now know that we 
can find no security in the treaties which 
seemed to protect the peace of the world. 
If the foe is treacherous and unscrupu- 
lous, he will not be restrained by " scraps 
of paper.'' He will not be governed by a 
decent respect for the opinions of man- 
kind. He will break every convention of 
civilization which may fetter his purpose. 

Indeed, the conduct of Prussia has re- 
vealed to us that the veneer of civiliza- 
tion is thinner and more brittle than we 
had believed. We have seen it crack, 
and we have beheld beneath it the in- 
human characteristics which we hoped 
the centuries had bred out of civilized 
man — the many long centuries which 



BRANDER MATTHEWS 



35 



stretch back to our probably arboreal 
ancestor, akin to the gorilla in the sav- 
agery of his lusts. 

It may be only a material benefit that 
we are now better prepared to defend 
ourselves than ever before; but it is a 
moral benefit that we have had our eyes 
opened to the necessity of self-defense 
against a nation which boasts of its 
civilization while it is reverting to prac- 
tises abhorrent even to barbarians. 

It is a moral benefit, also, that we have 
been compelled to consider anew the 
future relation of the United States to the 
rest of the world. Our superb isolation, 
possible in the past, will be impossible 
in the future. Our interests are bound 
up with those of the rest of the world. 
We cannot hereafter shrink away from 
the discussion of international questions, 
or shirk out of the duties imposed on us 
by our position in the brotherhood of 
nations. 

We may keep out of the entangling 
alliances that Washington warned us 
against, but we cannot get out of bearing 
our share of the burden. We shall be 
forced to hold fellowship with the other 
peoples to take part in their deliberations, 
and to aid in the execution of their and 
our decisions. 

And the war has revealed these other 
peoples to us in new aspects, compelling 
us to reconsider our former judgments. 
What we now believe the Germans to be, 
and the French, and the British, is not 
at all what we believed them to be five 
years ago. The picture of a typical 
German or Frenchman or Britisher which 
we had in our mind has been modified 
in many ways. 

The portraits we had then were often 
hazy in outline, because of our ignorance 
and our want of interest. The portraits 
we have now are sharply defined as we 
have had our attention focused. Our 
knowledge has been multiplied and cor- 
rected as our interest has been quickened. 

It is instructive for us to compare our 
opinion of the Germans as it is now and as 
it was before they started the war. Most 
of us held the Germans to be a gentle 



folk, sentimental, slow-moving, hard- 
working, beer-drinking, lacking in ini- 
tiative. We acknowledged willingly their 
leadership in the musical arts, but we 
had not had impressed upon us the names 
of German painters, German sculptors, 
or German architects. We knew that a 
few of the more significant discoveries in 
science were to be credited to them, and 
also a few, but only a few, of the num- 
berless inventions of the past century. 
Their contribution to scientific advance 
seemed to us the result of plodding in- 
dustry rather than of brilliant inspiration. 

We were without intimate acquaintance 
with later German literature, perhaps 
because the writers who were popular 
in Germany between Heine and Haupt- 
mann did not exert the large appeal 
which would carry their works beyond 
the borders of their own language. We 
had not had occasion to familiarize our- 
selves with the books in which the doc- 
trine of Pan-Germanism was arrogantly 
proclaimed; and we were far from sus- 
pecting that generation after generation 
the Germans had been taught, in school 
and in university, to believe that they 
were a race apart, so superior to all 
others that it was not only their right but 
their duty to impose their ideas, their 
ideals, and their organization upon all 
other races. 

Then suddenly their rulers dropped the 
mask, and the scales fell from our eyes. 
The nation which had invited our admira- 
tion for its Gemtlthlichkeit instantly aroused 
our abhorrence for its Schrecklichkeit. 
Its leaders shocked the moral sense of 
the world both by words and by deeds; 
and they were innocently surprised that 
what seemed natural and necessary to 
them should arouse indignant protest 
and hostile contempt. Strange is it 
that a nation with a superabundance of 
professors of psychology should suffer 
from a penury of knowledge of human 
nature! Strange is it, also, that the 
leaders of this nation are intellectual 
without being intelligent! 

Perhaps we knew a little more about 
France than about Germany, and yet we 



36 



BRANDER MATTHEWS 



were as much in error as regards the one 
country as the other. We had more 
translations from the French than from 
the German; and as most of these were 
novels of Parisian life, fast and fash- 
ionable, we derived from them the false 
impression that the French were friv- 
olous and immoral. We failed to under- 
stand their frankness in regard to their 
own defects, their detestation of hy- 
pocrisy, their more natural simplicity. 
In our comic papers and in our comic 
plays a Frenchman was likely to be a 
figure of fun; and there were not want- 
ing Americans who seemed to suppose 
that France was inhabited mainl}' by 
milliners and by cooks. 

Nor did we get any more accurate 
vision of French character from our 
newspaper discussion of French politics 
than from our own reading of French 
novels. We recalled the Panama swindle, 
the Dreyfus affair, and the Caillaux 
scandal; and not a few Americans in- 
clined to the opinion that the virtue had 
gone out of the French, and that France 
was steadily deteriorating from lack of 
courage and of strength. 

Then millions of armed invaders swept 
almost up to the gates of Paris, and the 
French exhibited at once the courage and 
the strength we had been ready to deny 
them. In that hour of imminent peril 
the immortal soul of France stood naked 
before the world in all its sublime no- 
bility. Outnumbered and almost over- 
whelmed, the French displayed their tra- 
ditional gallantry, and also a serious 
steadfastness, a grim determination, 
which enabled them to retreat day after 
day and yet to be ready to advance at 
once and to attack with unbroken 
energy when the order came to face the 
other way. 

And the temper of the French was as 
significant as their sturdiness. They did 
not whine and they did not boast. The 
braggart was as infrequent as the coward. 
They did not plead for applause, and they 
asked for no sympathy. They had no 
time to think of the opinion of other 
countries; they had to defend their own. 



Of course, they were glad to get help 
when it came. They welcomed the 
British troops as they have since wel- 
comed the American advance-guard; 
but in the defense of their own soil they 
were ready to bear the brunt of the 
battle, as the fighting about Verdun 
testified. 

The British we ought to have known 
better than we knew either the Germans 
or the French, if only because of our pos- 
session of the same language and of our 
inheritance of the same literature. They 
w^ere our kin across the sea — a little more 
than kin and often less than kind. 
They had been our foes in two wars, as 
every American schoolboy knew; and 
in the second of these wars they had 
burned the Capitol at Washington. They 
had often annoyed us b}^ the exhibition 
of insular arrogance; and only of late 
had they shown any desire or any abil- 
ity to understand us. Our attitude to 
them was not hostile, of course; it was 
not even unfriendly; but it could hardly 
be called friendly. 

We could not but mark symptoms of 
relaxing energy in the British Isles. 
In almost every department of life we 
beheld what seemed to be a lazy unwill- 
ingless to make the resolute effort re- 
quired if Great Britain was to keep 
abreast of the march of events. We 
wondered if the complacency born of 
former supremacy in discovery and in- 
vention, in manufacture, commerce, and 
finance, might not be bringing about an 
enfeebling of the fiber of the British. 
Instead of girding up their loins and set- 
ting their house in order, they were will- 
ing to waste their time in the bitter and 
futile debates of petty partizan politics. 

The invasion of Belgium awakened the 
British from their lethargy; and they 
made it obvious at once that they were 
neither weak nor lazy when they had to 
fight for their lives. At the call of the 
bugle the national will stiffened, and every 
one of the doubtful symptoms of in- 
difference and incapacity disappeared. 
It seemed as if John Bull had sweated 
off his fat and stood erect, lean and 



BRANDER MATTHEWS 



37 



sinewy, as young as if he had been his own 
grandson. The navy was ready; and 
army after army was made ready. 
Every activity of the nation was re- 
organized, speeded up, and coordinated 
harmoniously. Loan after loan was over- 
subscribed, and crushing taxation was 
borne without a murmur. 

More significant than any other sign 
of strength was the fact that Great 
Britain made no demand upon her col- 
onies — made, indeed, no appeal to them 
for help in the hour of need. More sig- 
nificant still is the fact that the oversea 
dominions sprang to arms at once and 
voluntarily did their utmost to succor and 
to support the mother country. Every- 
body knew that the bond which tied these 
distant dominions to the island kingdom 
was loose; but nobody knew that it was 
unbreakable. The British Empire sud- 
denly became a fact and not a figure of 
speech. 

Its ties have now been sealed by blood. 
It has today a unity and a solidarity 
more cohesive than any had dared to 
hope. And this is because it is not 
truly an empire, ruled by an emperor 
wielding undisputed authority; it is a 
commonwealth of free and self-governing 
states, with a central administration 
which exercises no coercion and seeks no 
service upon compulsion. It came into 
being haphazard, as the inevitable result 
of a series of happy accidents; and in the 
future it will have a consciousness of it- 
self, due to the proud memory of sacri- 
fices in common. 

Perhaps no one of the by-products of 
the war is more immediately important 
than the regeneration and reinvigoration 
of the United Kingdom, and than the 
unification of the scattered territories 
which constitute the British common- 
wealth. Yet it may prove that there is 
another consequence of our taking up 
arms to fight in alliance with France and 
England and Italy which will bulk still 
more largely in history. 

We Americans had the tradition of 
friendship with the French, but we had a 
tradition of enmity with the English. 



The battles of the Revolution and of the 
War of 1 812 occupy much space in our 
school histories. We remembered only 
too well the seven years' struggle with 
the British; but we did not remind our- 
selves that the King of England we were 
really fighting was a German who could 
scarcely speak English, and who was able 
to hire Hessians from his fellow German 
rulers. We did not give weight enough 
to what we knew — that the best men in 
England were on our side against their 
German king. We never allowed our- 
selves to forget that we had had two 
wars with Great Britain, and that we 
had been on the brink of a third war more 
than once in the dark years between Bull 
Run and Gettysburg. 

But this third war had been averted, 
and we had lived in peace with England 
for more than a hundred years, with an 
unguarded frontier of three thousand 
miles between us and British territory. 
The English king is not now a German; 
and the institutions of England have 
been liberaHzed decade after decade until 
now the' control of the people over the 
government in Great Britain is as in- 
disputable as it is in the United States. 
The inhabitants of the American Union 
and of the British Empire possess the 
same language, the same literature, the 
same law. They are possessed by the 
same ideals of conduct. They are in- 
spired by the same hopes for the future. 
As Mr. Balfour said last year in response 
to an address by the American ambas- 
sador at a meeting in London on the 
Fourth of July: 

These hopes and these ideals we have not 
learned from each other. We have them in 
common from a common history and from a 
common ancestry. We have not learned 
freedom from you nor you from us. We 
both sprang from the same root, and we both 
cultivate the same great aims. . . . Will 
not our descendants, when they come to look 
back upon this unique episode in the history 
of the world, say that among the incalcuable 
circumstances which it produced, the most 
beneficent and the most permanent is that we 
are brought together and united for one com- 



38 



BRANDER MATTHEWS 



mon purpose in one common understanding 
— the two great branches of the English- 
speaking race? 

Just as the war forced us in America to 
revise our opinions of the British, the 
French, and the Germans, so our own 
entry into it revealed us to ourselves, 
it proved that we had not degenerated 
since 1776 and 1861. It showed that the 
stock was as sturdy as ever, not lacking 
"iron in the blood to edge resolve with." 
It was at once made manifest that 
superabundant prosperity and long-pro- 
tracted peace had not combined to breed 
sloth and corruption. 

Maeterlinck had expressed a belief, 
not uncommon before this conflict began, 
that "courage, moral and physical en- 
durance, if not forgetfulness of self, re- 
nunciation of all comfort, the faculty of 
sacrifice, the power to face death, belong 
exclusively to the most primitive, the 
least happy, the least intelUgent of peo- 
ples, those who are least capable of rea- 
soning, of taking danger into account.'' 
On the very first day of the war his fellow 
Belgians proved the falsity of Maeter- 
linck's opinion; and it was promptly con- 
tradicted by the conduct of the French 
and of the British. 

The men capable of reasoning and of 
taking danger into account were found to 
have a higher courage than that which 
we find in the most primitive and the 
least intelligent of peoples. They have 
physical courage stiffened by moral cour- 
age. Their imagination may give them 
a keener sense of the perils which lie 
before them, but it does not inhibit 
them from fronting these perils at the 
call of duty. War does not create the 
manly and martial virtues; it merely re- 
veals them and affords immediate oc- 
casion for their exercise. 

We are naturally inclined to credit the 
men of 1776 and the men of 1861 with 
triumphant heroism, but they were not 
all of heroic temper. The Revolution 
was won by the Continentals; and on 
more than one occasion the militia be- 
haved as badly as they did in the War 



of 181 2. In the Civil War, too, there 
were thousands of coffee-coolers and 
bounty-jumpers. 

The spirit of the American people is at 
least as good today as it was in those 
distant yesterdays; and in one respect 
it seems to be better — it is less emotional 
and more sternly moral. Our men are 
not volunteering with hurrahing hysteria. 
They have no glamour of glory, no de- 
ceptive vision of themselves on horse- 
back waving swords and leading head- 
long charges. After three years of war 
it is stripped and bare of all its romantic 
allurements. It is recognized to be what 
the British soldier called it — "damn 
dull, damn dirty, and damn dangerous." 
Even the hot and adventurous ardor of 
\outh cannot blind men to its perils. 

It is with eyes open to what is before 
them that more than a million men have 
entered our mihtary services since the 
United States broke with Germany. 
Most of them were moved not by the 
zest of adventure, not by the ardor of 
youth, not by the stimulus of enthusiasm, 
but by a resolute sense of duty. They 
knew that a hard job had to be done, and 
they felt that it was up to them so see it 
through. There was no sudden heat in 
their action, but rather a cold determina- 
tion, characteristic of men capable of 
reasoning and of taking danger into ac- 
count. And perhaps in this respect the 
temper of the men of 191 7 is even finer 
than the spirit of the men of 1861, who 
could not know so well what was before 
them. 

Even if this may seem a little fanciful, 
there is no doubt as to the superiority of 
1 91 7 over 1 86 1 in another field — in the 
making of the whole nation ready for 
war, in the conserving of its supplies, in 
the utilization of its energies, and in the 
coordination of its endeavors. 

Never before in the history of the 
United States has there been a volunteer- 
ing of the captains of industry, of the 
men who make things and who do things, 
of " big business" on the one side and of 
the labor-unions on the other. Never 
before have the inventors been mobilized, 



BRANDER MATTHEWS 



39 



as they have been in the Naval Consulting 
Board, on which the}' serve without pa>' 
and meet all their own expenses. Never 
before has there ever come into existence 
a Council of National Defense, made up 
of men of the highest repute, read\' to 
abandon their own private tasks to work 
for the public good, giving the nation 
the benefit of their skill, their experience, 
and their resourcefulness, without thought 
of any other reward than their satisfac- 
tion in their ability to be of use in the 
hour of need. 

The Council of National Defense and 
its many subsidiaries, the Committee 
on Transportation — which has unified 
all the railroads — the Aircraft Production 
Board, the General Munitions Board, the 
General Medical Board, and the Com- 
mercial Economy Board, have repeated!)' 
called for the aid of busy men; and these 
men have instantly abandoned their own 
business to give their whole time to the 
service of the nation. Competitors have 



been willing to cooperate for the public 
good. 

No doubt there have been exceptions 
to this patriotic proffering of personal 
service; there have been not a few selfish 
and greedy profiteers; but when at last 
the war is at an end, and when the time 
comes for its m\riad activities to be seen 
in perspective, its historians will need to 
devote an ample share of their records to 
the setting forth of the deeds of men who 
did not fight, but w^ho made it possible 
for the exported army to do the fighting, 
and who organized the civilian popula- 
tion to avoid waste, to undergo dis- 
cipline, and to bear its share of the bur- 
den. And it is one of the undeniable 
benefits of the war that we have had dis- 
closed to us the presence in the body 
politic of citizens of this high t\'pe. We 
might well have hoped that such men 
existed, even if the}' were onl}' a few; 
and now we know that they exist and 
that the}' are many. 



HORATIO PARKER 



A NOTE ON GERMAN MUSIC AND GERMAN IDEAS 



Many years of life in Germany have 
given me opportunity to form opinions at 
first hand, and frequent travehng between 
Germany and England a chance to com- 
pare the two nations. Not all Germans 
have horns, hoofs and tails, nor have all 
the English sunny wings and symmetrical 
halos, but both races are well represented 
by prominent personalities. 

My earliest impressions of the Kaiser 
have been constantly maintained and 
strengthened by successive reactions to 
his words and acts. He seems to typify 
the general aesthetic changes for the worse 
which we have seen in his race. 1 be- 
lieve his great popularity at home rested 
largely upon the fact that he embodied 
personally the weaknesses of his nation, 
in fact all those qualities which Anglo- 
Saxons most frequently deplore among 
Germans. The episode of the tenant of 
Cadinen is most characteristic. He has 
an infallible, instinctive preference for the 
spectacular and commonplace in art and 
music — Roland of Berlin, the Sang an 
Aegir — the Siegesallee. The reticence of 
English personalities in this regard is 
gratifying by comparison. 

Some German characteristics are ad- 
mirable, their social system is in many 
ways excellent for them and, dissociated 
from military ideals and practices, much 
of it would be good for us all, but there is 
no room in it for neighboring people. 
The Germans are bad neighbors and they 
expect the same of others. 

There is however no escape for musi- 
cians from their music. There is no more 
valid substitute for Bach than for work. 
Although we do not always fmd in Ger- 
man music the consistent clarity and trans- 
parence which so endear French music to 
us, other qualities equally indispensable 
are there. The art grew to maturity, 
to dignity and to worth among Germans 



although of late years it shows a devel- 
opment of aims and practices similar to 
what one finds in their other activities. 
The deliberately announced and practised 
renunciation of "absolute music,'' the 
lurid, literal, muddy extravagance of re- 
cent products suggests, to quote President 
Nichols' fine phrase, "the ideal of effi- 
ciency rather than the efficiency of the 
ideal." 

They are passionate devotees of their 
beliefs or convictions and their objects 
of devotion have gradually become lower. 
Instead of the ethereal heights of Bach 
we find concrete, detailed specifications 
of human affairs, often weaknesses or ugli- 
nesses. Austerity of thought has given 
way to luxuriance. 

The work of Richard Strauss gives us 
the bulk of modern German music. Max 
Reger ought to be considered, but 1 search 
vainly for a third name. No composer 
was ever technically better equipped than 
Strauss, yet we find in the Alpine Sym- 
phony, his latest large work, a succession 
of trivial details, a beautiful waterfall, 
charming musically but rather childish 
aesthetically, real sheep-bells, twelve hunt- 
ers with horns in the coat room, et cetera. 
The veil of mist at the beginning of the 
work is genial and impressive, a really 
new idea in music, but the sunrise has 
been done quite as well by Mendelssohn, 
and the whole work is altogether uncon- 
vincing as to its greatness. It is only fair 
to say that this is not his best work. 

Prejudice of the public and of officials 
in this country against modern German 
music is perhaps justifiable, but against 
the classics it is rather hysterical and quite 
harmful, for they can neither be spared 
nor replaced. 

More than other arts music is in a tran- 
sition state for it is the youngest of them. 
What effect upon it the war will have can- 



40 



JAMES FORD RHODES 



4» 



not be foretold, but we can hope for bet- 
ter results than have shown themselves 
as yet. It is as useless to deny the beauty 
and greatness of classical masterpieces 
by Germans as to deny the same qualities 



in their mountains, but it is safe to expect 
that extravagances and weaknesses, trace- 
able rather to their ideals than their 
workmanship, will disappear, leaving the 
music of the world purer and stronger. 



JAMES FORD RHODES 



GERMANY'S SHAME 



Germany will be beaten, as she is war- 
ring against the ideas of the civilized 
world, and such a conflict can have but 
one end. Her ruthless submarine war- 
fare is "highway robbery and murder/' 
She carries on war by terror. " The most 
pathetic victim, of this terrible wrong," 
wrote van Loon, "will be the hale and 
hearty German of fifty years hence, a 
lonely figure, shunned by all because of 



the barbarities of his fathers — a lasting 
sacrifice to the injured decency of the 
human race.'' He cannot similarly re- 
flect, as the Southerner does when his 
mind reverts to the Lost Cause, of Sidney 
Johnston sending on the battlefield his 
surgeon to care for wounded Union sol- 
diers and of Robert E. Lee enjoining 
during his invasion into Pennsylvania a 
scrupulous respect for private property. 



Let us pay with our bodies for our soul's desire. — Theodore Roosevelt. 

THEODORE ROOSEVELT 

EXTRACTS FROM THE SPEECH AT PORTLAND, MAINE. 

MARCH 28, 1918 



This country is now involved in the 
greatest war of all time. In common 
with the rest of the world it is passing 
through one of those tremendous crises 
which lie centuries apart in world his- 
tory. Under such conditions the ques- 
tion of partizanship sinks into utter in- 
significance compared with the great 
question of patriotism, compared with 
the duty of all of us to act with stern 
and whole-hearted loyalty to this mighty 
republic, and to serve the interests of the 
republic and the ideals which make the 
republic the hope of the future of man- 
kind, ... I make precisely such an 
appeal as I should have made fifty-five 
years ago, in the days of the Civil War. 
We stand for the nation now as Lincoln 
stood for the nation then. We stand 
against Germany now as he stood against 
slavery then. In those days the men 
who demanded peace or kept demanding 
conferences to talk about peace were the 
foes of the Union and of liberty. Today 
they are the foes of liberty and civiliza- 
tion. There is but one way to get a right- 
eous and lasting peace and that is to beat 
Germany to her knees. . . . 

We are pledged to the hilt as a nation 
to put this war through without flinching 
until we win the peace of overwhelming 
victory. We owe this to our own honor 
and to our future well-being. We owe 
it to the liberty-loving peoples of man- 
kind. We are pledged to secure for each 
well-behaved nation the right to control 
its own destinies and to live undominated 
and unharmed by others so long as it does 
not harm others. 

We are in this war because of special 
and intolerable grievance against Ger- 
many; because in addition to many other 
misdeeds she for two years followed a 



course of deliberate murder of our un- 
armed and unoffending citizens, men, 
women and children; because her contin- 
uous and contemptuous maltreatment of 
our country rendered it imperative for us 
to go to war in order to ensure our future 
safety against such maltreatment by any 
foreign nation. Our first duty is to beat 
down Germany in order to save ourselves 
and our belongings, in order to save our 
women and our children and our homes. 
We fight for the future of our own dear 
land, but we are also in the war because 
in common with all civilized mankind 
we have been outraged by Germany's 
callous and cynical brutalities against 
well-behaved weaker nations. This is a 
war on behalf of treaties as against scraps 
of paper; for the freedom of the sea against 
world enslavement (for Germany has been 
the real foe of freedom of the seas) ; it is a 
war on behalf of small well-behaved na- 
tions against the domineering and infi- 
nitely cruel arrogance of the brutal and 
scientific German militarism; a war for 
helpless women and children against mur- 
derers; a war for civilization against bar- 
barism, honor against infamy, right against 
wrong; a war against the powers of dark- 
ness, of death and of hell. As for our own 
special grievance it is far more serious 
than any grievance for which ever before 
we had to fight a foreign foe. Germany 
has wronged us far more seriously than 
Great Britain wronged us during the 
years that led up to our Declaration of 
Independence. Germany has waged war 
with utter faithlessness and with inhuman 
cruelty. The black infamy of her con- 
duct toward Belgium has no parallel in 
civilized history since the close of the 
dreadful wars of religion in the seventeenth 
century. . . . We cannot with honor 



42 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT 



43 



accept any inconclusive peace. Our aim 
is to beat Germany and the allies of Ger- 
many and we cannot abandon a single one 
of our allies, as long as that all\- is true to 
the common cause. 

The events of the past three and a half 
3'ears have brought home to us in startling 
fashion the truth that in this country the 
man who is not wholly American and 
nothing but Am.erican is a traitor to Am- 
erica. There can be no such thing as a 
fifty-fift}' allegiance. There are no better 
Americans in this land than the Americans 
of German blood who are Americans and 
nothing else. It is a shame and a disgrace 
not to treat these men precisely as all 
other Americans are treated. They are 
fit to ser\'e in our armies in any position, 
from the major-general do\sTi; they are fit 
to hold an\' position in civil life, from 
President down. But the mien of German 
blood who have tried to be both Germans 
and Americans are not Americans at all, 
but traitors to America and tools and serv- 
ants of German)' against America. Or- 
ganizations like the German-American 
Alliance have serv^ed Germ.an\' against 
America. Hereafter we must see that the 
melting-pot really does melt. There 
should be but one language in this coun- 
try — the English language. W'e require 
of all immigrants who come hither to be- 
come citizens that they shall specificalh- 
forswear allegiance to the land from which 
they came as well as swear allegiance to 
this land. Hereafter we must see to it 
that this oath is observed in spirit as well 
as in letter; and that the men bom here, of 
whatever blood, and whether their an- 
cestors have lived in this land for genera- 
tions or came here from some foreign 
land, are brought up as Americans and as 
nothing else, speaking as their own tongue 
the speech of Washington and Lincoln; 
and knowing lo}alty to but one flag, the 
flag that floats over our armies now, the 
flag that was carried by our fathers when 
in their days the storm of war blew over 
the land, the flag that was borne b>' their 
fathers and fathers' fathers up the red 
heights of danger to the summits of glory 
and honor. . . . 



The men under Pershing reflect honor 
on this republic precisely because they 
have those qualities of courage, hardi- 
hood, resourcefulness and energ\' which 
were possessed b\' the men who followed 
Sheridan and Stonewall Jackson, by the 
men who followed Mad Anthon}' Wayne 
and Light Horse Harry Lee. So it is with 
the great and complex machinery of our 
industrial and social life. The simple 
governmental processes which sufficed in 
the days of Washington and even in the 
days of Lincoln are as utterh- inadequate 
today in peace as the flintlock of Bunker 
Hill and the smooth-bore muskets of 
Bull Run would be in war. We cannot 
afford to tolerate flintlock methods of 
warfare in time of war, or flintlock meth- 
ods of government for meeting the prob- 
lems of industry in time of peace. We 
need new weapons. But we need the old 
spirit back of the new weapons. We need 
to show the same combination of idealism 
and of hard-headed common sense, of in- 
dignation against wrong and sober cau- 
tion against being misled into foolish ac- 
tion against wrong, that our forefathers 
have shown in both the great national 
crises of the past. We need to show 
generosity of heart and also soundness of 
head. We need courage; we need com- 
mon sense — for without courage and com- 
mon sense we shall not work out our sal- 
vation. But even more we need to show 
in our relations with one another here 
within our own boundaries and in our 
relations with the rest of the nations of 
mankind, that qualit>- for the lack of 
which no other qualities atone, that 
qualit}' — itself the sum of many qualities 
— lacking which no nation can ever attain 
to true greatness: the qualit\- of character 
— character which neither does wrong nor 
suffers wrong; character which will rather 
do right to its own hurt than profit by evil 
done others. 

Let us judge each man on his worth as 
a man; for the line of cleavage between 
good men and bad men runs through every 
class. There are some bad men in every 
rank of life. Yet I believe that in every 



44 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT 



rank of life the good men far outnumber 
the bad. Trouble generally comes from 
failure to understand one another, and 
therefore failure to s\mpathize with one 
another's needs and feelings and purposes. 
Let us try to look at all the puzzling 
questions that arise with our brother's 
eyes as well as with our own. Lincoln laid 
down the great needs for us to meet. This 
is the people's government — our govern- 
ment, friends, yours and mine. It must 
be a government of the people; for every- 
body must be governed, must be con- 



trolled, and if there is not self-control there 
will in the end be alien control; if we do 
not govern ourselves somebody else will 
surely govern us. It must be government 
by the people; by all of us; not merel>' by 
some of us. It must be government for 
the people; again for all the people, not 
merely some of us; not for a mob, nor for 
a plutocracy, but for all decent, well- 
behaved men and women. Woe to 
those who would sunder us, brother from 
brother, along the lines either of envy or 
of arrogance! 



HIS LAST PUBLIC MESSAGE 

Mr. Roosevelt's death occurred on the 6th of Januar\', 19 19. On the 2nd he wrote the 
letter which follows to the American Defense Society in response to an invitation. On the 
night of the 5th it was read in New York at a public meeting under the auspices of the 
Society. 



I cannot be with you and so all I can 
do is wish you godspeed. 

There must be no sagging back in 
the fight for Americanism, merely be- 
cause the war is over. There are plenty 
of persons who have already made the 
assertion that they believe the American 
people have a short memory and that 
they intend to revive all the foreign 
associations w^hich most directly interfere 
with the complete Americanization of our 
people. 

Our principle in this matter should be 
absolutely simple. In the first place 
we should insist that if the immigrant 
who comes here in good faith becomes an 
American and assimilates himself to us, 
he shall be treated on an exact equality 
with every one else, for it is an outrage 
to discriminate against any such man 
because of creed or birthplace or origin. 

But this is predicated upon the man's 



becoming in fact an American and nothing 
but an American. If he tries to keep 
segregated with men of his own origin 
and separated from the rest of America, 
then he isn't doing his part as an American. 

There can be no divided allegiance here. 
Any man who says he is an American, 
but something else also, isn't an American 
at all. We have room for but one flag 
the American flag, and this excludes the 
red flag, which symbolizes all wars against 
liberty and civilization, just as much as 
it excludes any foreign flag of a nation to 
which we are hostile. 

We have room for but one language 
here and that is the English language, for 
we intend to see that the crucible turns 
our people out as Americans, of American 
nationality, and not as dwellers in a 
polyglot boarding house; and we have 
room for but one soul loyalty, and that is 
loyalty to the American people. 



ELIHU ROOT 



THE ISSUES OF THE WAR 



Extract from an Address Before the National Security League, 
Chicago, September 14, 191 7 



This is a war of defense. It is perfectly 
described in the words of the Constitution 
which established this nation: "To pro- 
vide for the common defense" and "To 
secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves 
and our posterity/' 

The national defense demands not 
merely force, but intelligence. It re- 
quires foresight, consideration of the 
policies and purposes of other nations, 
understanding of the inevitable or prob- 
able consequence of the acts of other 
nations, judgment as to the time when 
successful defense may be made, and 
when it will be too late, and prompt action 
before it is too late. 

By entering this war in April, the 
United States availed itself of the very 
last opportunity to defend itself against 
subjection to German power before it 
was too late to defend itself successfully. 

For many years we have pursued our 
peaceful course of internal development 
protected in a variety of ways. We were 
protected by the law of nations to which 
all civilized governments have professed 
their allegiance. So long as we com- 
mitted no injustice ourselves we could 
not be attacked without a violation of 
that law. We were protected by a series 
of treaties under which all the principal 
nations of the earth agreed to respect our 
rights and to maintain friendship with 
us. We were protected by an extensive 
system of arbitration created by or con- 
sequent upon the peace conferences at 
The Hague, and under which all contro- 
versies arising under the law and under 
treaties were to be settled peaceably by 
arbitration and not by force. We were 
protected by the broad expanse of ocean 
separating us from all great military 



powers, and by the bold assertion of the 
Monroe Doctrine that if any of those 
powers undertook to overpass the ocean 
and establish itself upon these western 
continents that would be regarded as 
dangerous to the peace and safety of the 
United States, and would call upon her 
to act in her defense. We were protected 
by the fact that the policy and fleet of 
Great Britain were well known to support 
the Monroe Doctrine. We were protected 
by the delicate balance of power in Eu- 
rope, which made it seem not worth while 
for any power to engage in a conflict here 
at the risk of suffering from its rivals there. 

All these protections were swept away 
by the war which began in Europe in 
19 1 4. The war was begun by the con- 
certed action of Germany and Austria — 
the invasion of Serbia on the east by 
Austria and the invasion of Luxemburg 
and Belgium on the west by Germany. 
Both invasions were in violation of the 
law of nations, and in violation of the 
faith of treaties. 

Everybody knew that Russia was bound 
in good faith to come to the relief of 
Serbia, that France was bound by treaty 
to come to the aid of Russia, that Eng- 
land was bound by treaty to come to the 
aid of Belgium, so that the invasion of 
these two small states was the beginning 
of a general European war. 

These acts, which have drenched the 
world with blood, were defended and 
justified in the bold avowal of the Ger- 
man government that the interests of 
the German state were superior to the 
obligations of law and the faith of treaties; 
that no law or treaty was binding upon 
Germany which it was for the interest of 
Germany to violate. 



45 



46 



ELIHU ROOT 



All pretense of obedience to the law of 
nations and of respect for solemn prom- 
ises was thrown off; and, in lieu of that 
system of lawful and moral restraint upon 
power which Christian civilization has 
been building up for a century was rein- 
stated the cynical philosophy of Fred- 
erick the Great, the greatest of the 
HohenzoUerns, who declares: 

"Statesmanship can be reduced to three 
principles: First, to maintain your power, 
and, according to circumstances, to extend it. 
Second, to form an alliance only for your 
own advantage. Third, to command fear and 
respect, even in the most disastrous times. 

" Do not be ashamed of making interested 
alliances from which \-ourself can derive the 
whole advantage. Do not make the foolish 
mistake of not breaking them when you be- 
lieve your interests require it. 

"Above all, uphold the following maxim: 
To despoil your neighbors is to deprive them 
of the means of injuring you. 

"When he is about to conclude a treaty 
with some foreign power, if a sovereign re- 
members he is a Christian, he is lost." 

From 1914 until the present, in a war 
waged by Germany with a revolting 
barbarity unequaled since the conquests 
of Genghis Khan, Germany has violated 
every rule agreed upon by civilized na- 
tions in modern times to mitigate the 
barbarities of war or to protect the rights 
of non-combatants and neutrals. She 
had no grievance against Belgium except 
that Belgium stood upon her admitted 
rights and refused to break the faith of 
her treaties by consenting that the neu- 
trality of her territory should be violated 
to give Germany an avenue for the 
attack upon France. 

The German Kaiser has taken posses- 
sion of the territory of Belgium and sub- 
jected her people to the hard yoke of a 
brutal soldiery. He has extorted vast 
sums from her peaceful cities. He has 
burned her towns and battered down her 
noble churches. He has stripped the 
Belgian factories of their machinery and 
deprived them of the raw material of 
manufacture. He has carried away her 
workmen by tens of thousands into slav- 



ery, and her women into worse than 
slavery. He has slain peaceful non-com- 
batants by the hundred, undeterred by 
the helplessness of age, of infancy, or of 
womanhood. He has done the same in 
northern France, in Poland, in Serbia, in 
Roumania. In all of these countries 
women have been outraged by the thou- 
sand, by tens of thousands, and who ever 
heard of a German soldier being punished 
for rape, or robbery, or murder? 

These revolting outrages upon human- 
ity and law are not the casual incidents of 
war, but are the results of a settled policy 
of frightfulness answering to the maxim 
of Frederick the Great to "command 
respect through fear." 

Why were these things done by Ger- 
many? The answer rests upon the 
accumulated evidence of German acts 
and German words so conclusive that no 
pretense can cover it, no sophistry can 
disguise it. The answer is that this war 
was begun and these crimes against hu- 
manity were done because Germany was 
pursuing the hereditary policy of the 
HohenzoUerns and following the instinct 
of the arrogant military caste which rules 
Prussia, to grasp the overlordship of the 
civilized w^orld and establish an empire 
in which she should play the role of 
ancient Rome. They were done because 
Prussian militarism still pursues the 
policy of power through conquest, of 
aggrandizement through force and fear, 
which in little more than two centuries 
has brought the puny mark of Branden- 
burg with its million and a half of people 
to the control of a vast empire — the 
greatest armed force of the modern world. 

It now appears beyond the possibility 
of doubt that this war was made by Ger- 
many pursuing a long and settled pur- 
pose. For many years she had been 
preparing to do exactly what she has 
done, with a thoroughness, a perfection 
of plans, and a vastness of provision in 
men, munitions and supplies never before 
equaled or approached in human history. 
She brought the war on when she chose, 
because she chose, in the belief that she 
could conquer the earth, nation by nation. 



ELIHU ROOT 



47 



All nations are egotistical, all peoples 
think most highly of their own qualities, 
and regard other peoples as inferior; but 
the egotism of the ruling class of Prussia 
is be\'ond all example and it is active and 
aggressive. The>- believe that German\- 
is entitled to rule the world b\' virtue of 
her superiorit}' in all these qualities which 
they include under the term '"' Kultur,'' 
and b}' reason of her power to compel 
submission by the sword. 

That belief does not evaporate in 
theorw It is translated into action, and 
this war is the action which results. 
This belief of national superiorit\' and 
the right to assert it everywhere is a 
tradition from the great Frederick. It 
has been instilled into the minds of the 
German people through all the universi- 
ties and schools. It has been preached 
from her pulpits and taught b>- her 
philosophers and historians. It has been 
maintained b\' her government and it 
will never cease to furnish the motive for 
the people of Prussia so long as German 
power enables the militar)' autocrac>' of 
Prussia to act upon it with success. 

Plainl}- if the power of the German 
government is to continue, America can 
no longer look for protection to the law 
of nations or the faith of treaties or the 
instincts of humanity or the restraints of 
modern civilization. 

Plainly, also, if we had sta\ed out of the 
war and Germany had won there would 
no longer have been a balance of power 
in Europe or a British tleet to support the 
Monroe Doctrine and protect America. 
Does any one indulge in the foolish 
assumption that Germany would not 
then have extended her lust for power by 
conquest to the American continent? 
Let him consider what it is for which the 
nations of Europe have been chiefl\- con- 
tending for centuries past. 

It has been for colonies. It has been to 
bring the unoccupied or weakl}' held 
spaces of the earth under their flags and 
their political control, in order to increase 
their trade and their power. 

Spain, Holland, Portugal, England, 
France, have all had their turn, and have 



covered the earth with their possessions. 
For thirt\' \ears Germany, the last comer, 
has been pressing forward with feverish 
activity the acquisition of stations for 
her power on ever\- coast and ever}* sea, 
restive and resentful because she has been 
obliged to take what others have left. 

Europe, Asia and Africa have been 
taken up. The Americas alone remain. 
Here in the vast and undefended spaces 
of the new world, fraught with potential 
wealth incalculable, German}' could "fmd 
her place in the sun," to use her emperor's 
phrase; Germany could fmd her "liberty 
of national evolution,'' to use his phrase 
again. Ever}' traditional polic}', ever}- 
instinct of predatory Prussia, would urge 
her into this new field of aggrandizement. 

What would prevent? The Monroe 
Doctrine? Yes. But what is the Mon- 
roe Doctrine as against a nation which 
respects onl}- force, unless it can be main- 
tained b}" force? We already know how 
the German government feels about the 
Monroe Doctrine. 

Bismarck declared it to be a piece of 
colossal impudence; and, when President 
Roosevelt interfered to assert the Doc- 
trine for the protection of Venezuela, the 
present Kaiser declared that if he had 
then had a larger nav}' he would have 
taken America b}' the scruff of the neck. 

If we had sta}ed out of the war, and 
German}' had won, we should have had 
to defend the Monroe Doctrine b}- force 
or abandon it; and if we abandoned it 
there would have been a Geiman naval 
base in the Caribbean commanding the 
Panama Canal, depriving us of that 
strategic line which unites our eastern 
and western coasts, and depriving us of 
the protection the expanse of ocean once 
gave; and an America unable or un- 
willing to protect herself against the 
establishment of a German naval base in 
the Caribbean would lie at the mercy 
of Germany, and subject to Germany's 
orders. America's independence would 
be gone unless she was read}' to fight for 
it, and her securit}' would thenceforth be 
not a securit}' of freedom, but onl}' a 
security purchased b}' submission. 



48 



ELIHU ROOT 



But if America had stayed out of the 
war and Germany had won, could we 
have defended the Monroe Doctrine? 
Could we have maintained our inde- 
pendence? For an answer to that ques- 
tion consider what we have been doing 
since the 2d of April last, when war was 
declared. 

Congress has been in continuous ses- 
sion passing with unprecedented rapidity 
laws containing grants of power and of 
money unexampled in our history. The 
executive establishment has been strain- 
ing every nerve to prepare for war. The 
ablest and strongest leaders of industrial 
activity have been called from all parts 
of the country to aid the government. 
The people of the country have generously 
responded with noble loyalty and enthu- 
siasm to the call for the surrender of 
money and of customary rights, and the 
supply of men to the service of the 
country. 

Nearly half a year has passed, and 
still we are not ready to fight. I am not 
blaming the government. It was inevi- 
table. Preparation for modern war can- 
not be made briefly or speedily. It 
requires time — long periods of time; and 
the more peaceful and unprepared for 
war a democracy is, the longer is the time 
required. 

It would have required just as long for 
America to prepare for war if we had 
stayed out of this war and Germany had 
won and we had undertaken then to 
defend the Monroe Doctrine or to defend 
our coasts when we had lost the protection 
of the Monroe Doctrine. Month after 
month would have passed with no ade- 
quate army ready to fight, just as these 
recent months have passed. 

But what would Germany have been 
doing in the meantime? How long would 
it have been before our attempts at prep- 
aration would have been stopped by 
German arms? A country that is forced 
to defend itself against the aggression of 
a military autocracy always prepared for 
war must herself be prepared for war 
beforehand or she never will have the 
opportunity to prepare. 



The history, the character, the avowed 
principles of action, the manifest and 
undisguised purposes of the German 
autocracy made it clear and certain that 
if America stayed out of the great war, 
and Germany won, America would forth- 
with be required to defend herself and 
would be unable to defend herself against 
the same lust for conquest, the same will 
to dominate the world, which has made 
Europe a bloody shambles. 

When Germany did actually apply her 
principles of action to us; when by the 
invasion of Belgium she violated the 
solemn covenant she had made with us to 
observe the law of neutrality established 
for the protection of peaceful states; 
when she had arrogantly demanded that 
American commerce should surrender its 
lawful right of passage upon the high 
seas under penalty of destruction; when 
she had sunk American ships and sent to 
their death hundreds of American citi- 
zens, peaceful men, women, and children; 
when the Gulflight and the Falaba and 
the Persia and the Arabic and the Sussex 
and the Lusitania had been torpedoed 
without warning, in contempt of law and 
of humanity; when the German embassy 
at Washington had been found to be the 
headquarters of a vast conspiracy of cor- 
ruption within our country, inciting sedi- 
tion and concealing infernal machines in 
the cargoes of our ships and blowing up 
our factories with the workmen laboring 
in them, and when the government of 
Germany had been discovered attempting 
to incite Mexico and Japan to form a 
league with her to attack us and to bring 
about a dismemberment of our territory, — 
then the question presented to the Ameri- 
can people was not what shall be done 
regarding each of these specific aggres- 
sions taken by itself, but what shall be 
done by America to defend her commerce, 
her territory, her citizens, her independ- 
ence, her liberty, her life as a nation 
against the continuance of assaults al- 
ready begun by that mighty and con- 
scienceless power which has swept aside 
every restraint and every principle of 
Christian civilization and is seeking to 



ELIHU ROOT 



49 



force upon a subjugated world the dark 
and cruel rule of a barbarous past? 

The question was how shall peaceful 
and unprepared and liberty loving Amer- 
ica save herself from subjection to the 
military power of Germany? There was 
but one possible answer. There was but 
one chance for rescue and that was to act 
at once while the other democracies of 
the world were still maintaining their 
liberty against the oppressor, to prepare 
at once while the armies and the navies 
of England and France and Italy and 
Russia and Roumania were holding down 
Germany so that she could not attack us 
while our preparation was but half accom- 
plished, to strike while there were allies 
loving freedom like ourselves to strike 
with us, to do our share to prevent the 
German Kaiser from acquiring that dom- 
ination over the world which would have 
left us without friends to aid us, without 
preparation, and without the possibility 
of successful defense. 

The instinct of the American democracy 
which led it to act when it did arose from 
a long delayed and reluctant conscious- 
ness still vague and half expressed, that 
this is no ordinary war which the world is 
waging. It is no contest for petty policies 
and profits. It is a mighty and all-em- 
bracing struggle between two conflicting 
principles of human right and human 
duty. It is a conflict between the divine 
right of kings to govern mankind through 
armies and nobles, and the right of the 
peoples of the earth who toil and endure 
and aspire to govern themselves by law 
in the freedom of individual manhood. 
It is the climax of the supreme strug- 



gle between autocracy and democracy. 
No nation can stand aside and be free 
from its effects. The two systems can- 
not endure together in the same world. 
If autocracy triumphs, military power 
lustful of dominion, supreme in strength, 
intolerant of human rights, holding itself 
superior to law, to morals, to faith, to 
compassion, will crush out the free de- 
mocracies of the world. If autocracy is 
defeated and nations are compelled to 
recognize the rule of law and of morals, 
then and then only will democracy be safe. 
To this great conflict for human rights 
and human liberty America has com- 
mitted herself. There can be no back- 
ward step. There must be either humil- 
iating and degrading submission or terri- 
ble defeat or glorious victory. It was 
no human will that brought us to this 
pass. It was not the President. It was 
not Congress. It was not the press. It 
was not any political party. It was not 
any section or part of our people. It 
was that in the providence of God the 
mighty forces that determine the destin- 
ies of mankind beyond the control of 
human purpose have brought to us the 
time, the occasion, the necessity, that 
this peaceful people so long enjoying the 
blessings of liberty and justice for which 
their fathers fought and sacrificed shall 
again gird themselves for conflict, and 
with all the forces of manhood nurtured 
and strengthened by liberty offer again 
the sacrifice of possessions and of life 
itself, that this nation may still be free, 
that the mission of American democracy 
shall not have failed, that the world 
shall be free. 



II 

OUR INTEREST IN THE VIOLATION OF BELGIUM 

Extract From Address Before the New York Republican Convention, 

February 15, 1916 



The American democracy stands for 
something more than beef and cotton 
and grain and manufactures; stands for 
something that cannot be measured by 
rates of exchange, and does not rise or 



fall with the balance of trade. The 
American people achieved liberty and 
schooled themselves to the service of 
justice before they acquired wealth, and 
they value their country's liberty and 



50 



ELIHU ROOT 



justice above all their pride of possessions. 
Beneath their comfortable optimism and 
apparent indifference they have a con- 
ception of their great republic as brave 
and strong and noble to hand down to 
their children the blessings of freedom 
and just and equal laws. They have 
embodied their principles of government 
in fixed rules of right conduct which they 
jealously preserve, and, with the instinct 
of individual freedom, they stand for a 
government of laws and not of men. 
They deem that the moral laws which 
formulate the duties of men towards each 
other are binding upon nations equally 
with individuals. Informed by their 
own experience, confirmed by their ob- 
servation of international life, they have 
come to see that the independence of 
nations, the liberty of their peoples, 
justice and humanity, cannot be main- 
tained upon the good nature, the kindly 
feeling, of the strong towards the weak; 
that real independence, real liberty, can- 
not rest upon sufferance; that peace and 
liberty can be preserved only by the 
authority and observance of rules of 
national conduct founded upon the prin- 
ciples of justice and humanity; only by 
the establishment of law among nations, 
responsive to the enlightened public 
opinion of mankind. To them liberty 
means not liberty for themselves alone, 
but for all who are oppressed. Justice 
means not justice for themselves alone, 
but a shield for all who are weak against 
the aggression of the strong. When their 
deeper natures are stirred they have a 
spiritual vision in which the spread and 
perfection of free self-government shall 
rescue the humble who toil and endure, 
from the hideous wrongs inflicted upon 
them by ambition and lust for power, 
and they cherish in their heart of hearts 
an ideal of their country loyal to the 
mission of liberty for the lifting up of the 
oppressed and bringing in the rule of 
righteousness and peace. 

To this people, the invasion of Bel- 
gium brought a shock of amazement and 
horror. The people of Belgium were 
peaceable, industrious, law-abiding, self- 



governing and free. They had no quar- 
rel with any one on earth. They were at- 
tacked by overwhelming military power; 
their country was devastated by fire and 
sword; they were slain by tens of thou- 
sands; their independence was destroyed 
and their liberty was subjected to the 
rule of an invader, for no other cause 
than that they defended their admitted 
rights. There was no question of fact; 
there was no question of law; there was 
not a plausible pretense of any other 
cause. The admitted rights of Belgium 
stood in the way of a mightier nation's 
purpose; and Belgium was crushed. 
When the true nature of these events was 
realized, the people of the United States 
did not hesitate in their feeling or in 
their judgment. Deepest sympathy with 
downtrodden Belgium and stern con- 
demnation of the invader were virtually 
universal. Wherever there was respect 
for law, it revolted against the wrong 
done to Belgium. Wherever there was 
true passion for liberty, it blazed out for 
Belgium. Wherever there was humanity, 
it mourned for Belgium. As the realiza- 
tion of the truth spread, it carried a 
vague feeling that not merely sentiment 
but loyalty to the eternal principles of 
right was involved in the attitude of the 
American people. And it was so, for if 
the nations were to be indifferent to this 
first great concrete case for a century of 
military power trampling under foot at 
will the independence, the liberty and the 
life of a peaceful and unoffending people 
in repudiation of the faith of treaties and 
the law of nations and of morality and of 
humanity — if the public opinion of the 
world was to remain silent upon that, 
neutral upon that, then all talk about 
peace and justice and international law 
and the rights of man, the progress of 
humanity and the spread of liberty is 
idle patter — mere weak sentimentality; 
then opinion is powerless and brute force 
rules and will rule the world. If no dif- 
ference is recognized between right and 
wrong, then there are no moral standards. 
There come times in the lives of nations 



ELIHU ROOT 



5» 



as of men when to treat wrong as if it 
were right is treason to the right. 

The American people were entitled not 
merely to feel but to speak concerning 
the wrong done to Belgium. It was not 
like interference in the internal affairs of 
Mexico or any other nation, for this was 
an international wrong. The law pro- 
tecting Belgium which was violated was 
our law and the law of every other civil- 
ized country. For generations we had 
been urging on and helping in its devel- 
opment and establishment. We had 
spent our efforts and our money to that 
end. In legislative resolution and execu- 
tive declaration and diplomatic corre- 
spondence and special treaties and inter- 
national conferences and conventions we 
had played our part in conjunction with 
other civilized countries in making that 
law. We had bound ourselves by it; we 
had regulated our conduct by it; and we 
were entitled to have other nations 
observe it. That law was the protection 
of our peace and security. It was our 
safeguard against the necessity of main- 
taining great armaments and wasting 
our substance in continual readiness for 
war. Our interest in having it main- 
tained as the law of nations was a sub- 
stantial, valuable, permanent interest, 
just as real as your interest and mine in 
having maintained and enforced the 
laws against assault and robbery and 
arson which protect our personal safety 
and property. Moreover, that law was 
written into a solemn and formal con- 
vention, signed and ratified by Germany 
and Belgium and France and the United 
States in which those other countries 
agreed with us that the law should be 
observed. When Belgium was invaded 
that agreement was binding not only 
morally but strictly and technically, be- 
cause there was then no nation a party 



to the war which was not also a party 
to the convention. The invasion of 
Belgium was a breach of contract with 
us for the maintenance of a law of nations 
which was the protection of our peace, 
and the interest which sustained the 
contract justified an objection to its 
breach. There was no question here of 
interfering in the quarrels of Europe. 
We had a right to be neutral and we were 
neutral as to the quarrel between Ger- 
many and France, but when as an inci- 
dent to the prosecution of that quarrel 
Germany broke the law which we were 
entitled to have preserved, and which she 
had agreed with us to preserve, we were 
entitled to be heard in the assertion of 
our own national right. With the right 
to speak came responsibility, and with 
responsibility came duty — duty of gov- 
ernment tow^ards all the peaceful men 
and women in America not to acquiesce 
in the destruction of the law which pro- 
tected them, for if the world assents to 
this great and signal violation of the law 
of nations, then the law of nations no 
longer exists and we have no protection 
save in subserviency or in force. And 
with the right to speak there came to 
this, the greatest of neutral nations, the 
greatest of free democracies, another duty 
to the cause of liberty and justice for 
which America stands; duty to the ideals 
of America's nobler nature; duty to the 
honor of her past and the hopes of her 
future; for this law was a bulwark of 
peace and justice to the world; it was a 
barrier to the spread of war; it was a safe- 
guard to the independence and liberty 
of all small, weak states. It marks the 
progress of civilization. If the world con- 
sents to its destruction, the world turns 
backwards towards savager>', and Amer- 
ica's assent would be America's abandon- 
ment of the mission of democracy. 



WILLIAM M. SLOANE 



EXTRACTS FROM A HISTORY OF PEACE 
Public Lectures Delivered in Several Universities, 1917-1918 



I 

But as the war progressed it proved a 
more desperate struggle than had been 
deemed possible, and elements of brutal 
ruthlessness which might have been 
foreseen, but were not, began to distress 
not only the belligerents, but substanti- 
ally the entire civilized world. It has 
proved to be not merely a struggle for 
the seizure of power in the less civilized 
parts of the earth, but the grim array of 
two types of civilization, our own and that 
of Germany, for their very existence. 
Into this titanic struggle we have thrown 
ourselves whole-heartedh' for the main- 
tenance of self-respect in part, but largely 
from a sense of the most imperative duty 
to preserve the institutions and tradi- 
tions not merely dear to us, as they are, 
but essential to the onh' life we are able 
to live — for self-preservation as well as for 
self-respect. Dimly and vaguely con- 
scious of this as we fmally are we begin, as 
other great powers are doing, to ask our- 
selves for what we are appealing to that 
last awful tribunal of bloodshed; not 
what we want in the large, which seems 
clear enough, but what we must fix in 
detail. Some are saying that we war for 
nationality, some for democracy, and 
many for the liberation of enslaved 
peoples from the bondage of autocracy; 
more clearly stated, for nationality every- 
where such as we possess at home, for 
democratic government everywhere such 
as we maintain in America, for liberty 
under law such as Americans demand and 
enjoy. Those who have read history 
superficially talk, as if it were a matter 
of absolute right, not of expediency and 
right, about restoring the stolen Schles- 
wig-Holstein to Denmark, the stolen Al- 
sace-Lorraine to France, the stolen Savoy 
to Italy; Poland and Finland to inde- 



pendence, Persia to autonomy, the Slavs 
of Austria-Hungary to equal rights with 
Germans and Magyars under the Haps- 
burgs, the Shantung peninsula to China, 
Ireland to home rule, and all the depend- 
encies of the United States to self-govern- 
ment. Of course these are only samples: 
there are eighteen peoples and nations 
within the former confines of Russia; 
there are certainly two Chinas, perhaps 
three; within the Balkan peninsula are 
five different claimants to self-directing 
nationality. 

To those who have deeply studied 
history these are not the words of sober- 
ness and sense. Since the world began 
there have been aggregations of indivi- 
duals united by blood or territory but 
mainly by common interest, the res- 
puhlica: throughout the ages some have 
shown capacity for self-government, some 
have not. Society in the large sense had 
its origins not in physical strength; there 
never were gorilla communities reliant on 
their own brute strength for protection 
against marauders, while simultaneously 
practicing the arts of peace in the tillage 
of their fields. There was no uplift to- 
ward civilization in the hunter stage, and 
no smooth transition from that to the 
nomadic anci further to the settled oc- 
cupations of fields, villages and towns. 
In every case known to research there 
were wars and convulsions from which 
guile, that is, mind, emerged triumphant 
over brute force. It was the union of 
this with physical weakness which pro- 
duced the strength essential to security: 
there was of course constant warfare, but 
fortification, tactics and strategy, how- 
ever primitive, overwhelmed sheer brute 
onset; organization conquered numbers, 
nerve power, which is will-power, began 
the never-ceasing push of animalism back 



52 



WILLIAM M. SLOANE 



53 



into the limbo of impotence . Then histon- 
began; ideals were formed; the statesman 
outran the general, even, in all that makes 
for progress. \\'h\' civilization moved 
westward to Europe and crossed the 
Atlantic is understood and can be ex- 
plained, but not in a few words. The 
fact is sufficient and the vestiges of its 
march are an open book to the traveler. 
What was initialK' true remained true; 
so completely true that around the globe 
there were and are degrees of culture 
among persons and peoples, that the 
inequalit>' of adaptation to high forms 
of living is glaring, that the social institu- 
tions of the few are absolutely impossible 
to the many, that politics must fit a na- 
tion like a garment and that misfits cause 
unrest with recourse to violence. Past 
and present are words totalh' destitute of 
meaning in the grand politics of our 
planet. The past is in the present, it is 
here and now as regards institutions, 
laws and forms of government. 

We cannot bum this fact deep enough 
into our souls. It is a crime against 
humanit)- to think of other peoples in 
terms of ourselves and our folkwa\s; in 
terms of our ideals and efforts to realize 
them. There is no reprobation sufficient 
for that trend toward intervention of a 
narrow self-sufficienc\- which conceives of 
the savage, the barbarian, the man of the 
tribe, the city-state; and of the modern 
nation in its varied forms as either desir- 
ing or needing the complexities of free 
democracy How far even we ourselves 
are fit to work the most perplexing and 
expensive s\'stem of government ever 
devised is as \"et undetermined. But for 
the free chance, the unhampered op- 
portunit}' to realize our ideals, we do and 
will sweat mone}' and blood; we lay, and, 
please God, we ever will lay our lives and 
fortunes on the altar of political liberty. 
Hitherto we have made our enormous 
sacrifices for ourselves and those within 
our gates; henceforth, we make the same 
freewill offering for the great world 
without, in so far as it desires our gifts 
and can by their acceptance strengthen its 
own purposes and fructif>" the blossoms 



of its own aspiration. W> shall indeed 
be foolish if in the coming peace there is 
an\' effort, successful or otherwise, to 
impose on any or all the stratified human- 
it}' of the world our dim, vague, \'et pre- 
cious and vital notions of nationality, con- 
stitutional government, or of democracy, 
that iridescent arch of promise in our 
heaven. 

Such a preamble to peace negotiation 
would probabl}' chill man\' ardent re- 
formers and be stigmatized as reaction- 
ary But the plea is hypocritical and 
Pharisaic because the merest wa\-farer 
can read the clear truth: peace stability 
depends on national institutions being a 
good fit, and no institutions from a second- 
hand shop will fit any single nation when 
the war is over. Japan wants a limited 
autocracy — strange oriental contradic- 
tion in terms — and has it. What Russia 
or the many Russias desire they must 
secure; either anarch}- or monarchy with 
or without checks and balances. France 
must remain a centrahzed republic or 
oligarch}-, as it is, or else turn federal 
republic, as has been proposed. And so 
on throughout the list; with stable govern- 
ments there can be peace, without them 
none. There are careful thinkers holding 
the conviction that when Bismarck set 
up the Thiers government and gave it the 
prestige of ending the war of 1870, he 
knew the device could barely outlast a 
generation. If we want an armistice, let 
us b}- all means set up governments which 
correspond to our own notions; if we want 
peace, let the respective peoples set up 
their own in order to have within their 
borders the only peace which can insure 
peace without. 

II 

This is a novelty in the relation of na- 
tions to each other because in the passing 
and antecedent ages the contracting 
parties under international law have 
without exception had governments im- 
posed on them b}- the hard hand of historv 
or custom, or else by the hostile temper of 
each nation regarding ever}' other. The 
onl}- country working a system made b}' a 



54 



WILLIAM M. SLOANE 



constitutional or constituent assembly is 
our own; and to this single fact we owe 
the rock-ribbed durabilit\- of the constitu- 
tions under which we live, state and 
federal. How shameful such an outcome ! 
many will exclaim. Perhaps. It re- 
mains a fact that " shame in the mantle of 
profit or advantage to its citizens has ever 
been pronounced wisdom." There is no 
inherent absolute right in sentimentalit}' 
or emotionalism; neither is there any in 
the pragmatism based on ruthless, selfish 
practicalit}'. But in negotiating a peace 
with a people content in its particular 
form of government there is no emotional- 
ism whatever and no pragmatism, there 
is just an effort to secure what the world 
has set out to get. Antecedent to the 
conclusion of the next world-charter the 
peoples must — not by plebiscite, a futile 
deceptive trick}' device, but in representa- 



tive assemblies — select and instruct their 
negotiators, responsible delegates of the 
popular will, constitutional bodies with 
power to maintain or to discard the men 
and groups who have made and conducted 
the war. Mere appointees of a party 
machine or a ruling caste cannot negotiate 
anything stable and bring in the reign of 
new principles in international relations. 
If theoretical independence is to be re- 
placed b\' actual interdependence the 
fact must be proclaimed; if not, there can 
be no enduring peace. .Mephistopheles 
declares: " I am a part of the force which, 
ever desiring evil, yet alwa\s creates the 
good." Possibly there is something basic 
in good resulting from evil, as it does; but 
impatient democracy calls for a good be- 
ginning that there may be surely a good 
end. 



EXTRACT FROM A HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY 
Public Lectures Delivered before Several Universities, 1917-191; 



'' 1 must have liberty withal, as large a 
charter as the wind, " said the melanchol\' 
Jaques, "To blow on whom I please." 
This is the democracy of peace, but that 
of war is quite another matter. Be- 
neath, above and around the democrac}' 
of war is liberty to choose superiors, to 
sen.'e and to sacrifice; the libert\- of stern 
duty, freedom from selfishness. Radical 
democrac}' in war spurns subordination 
and promotes coordination; conservative 
democrac}- exacts subordination and 
obedience to authority, once constituted. 
It supports the administration; the other 
hampers it. One is quick and determined ; 
the other noisy and impulsive, or else 
sullen and silent. Radicals cry peace 
when there is no peace and invite attack 
by unreadiness; conservatives prevent 
war by preparedness for it in time of 
peace. The latter concentrate responsi- 
bility in elected officials for long terms: 
the former swap horses while crossing the 
stream. To these, any man suffices for 
any emergency at any instant; to those. 



confidence in experience, character and 
previous training is axiomatic. 

Competenc}' and efficiency are on one 
side; on the other, unshaken faith in all 
human nature and trust in spontaneity, 
as the lively hope of victory. Spontane- 
it}- has gone far, will go far again; but 
ultimate victor}- comes when holocausts 
of human victims have been offered at its 
shrine, and after the one most gifted man 
having been made responsible, has welded 
his self-willed democrats into obedient 
ironsides. Cromwell did this; Napoleon 
did it; neither proved able either to make 
a lasting peace or to triumph as a peaceful 
administrator. Yet emergenc}' requires 
the man and if he come forward as did 
Lincoln and Grant the country is saved 
nationally, institutionally and morall}'.. 
The close of our Civil War was the con- 
clusive proof of democratic efficiency in 
war as well as in peace. The conqueror 
firmh' commanded a peace and dismissed 
himself with a veteran soldier}- to peaceful 
pursuits; while a democratic people. 



WILLIAM M. SLOANE 



55 



blended of radicals and conservatives, 
promptly, over-hastily, perhaps, but not 
ungenerously, began the work of reconcil- 
iation and reconstruction, happih- con- 
cluded within the brief space of a single 
generation. 

In war the greatest thing is not heroism, 
nor scientific murder, nor machiner\', nor 
even discipline and tactics : it alwa\s was 
and remains strateg\", which is the art of 
>^^nning victory with the least possible 
destruction either of life or of propert}-. 
Examined from this point of view, mon- 
arch\- and aristocrac\' have on the whole 
had the best of it in warfare. Washing- 
ton was a consummate strategist and in a 
societ}' like that of eighteenth century 
America could prove it. So could Lee 
in the Civil War, emerging as he did from 
a similar societ>' and acting through its 
organs. Probabl}' McClellan was the 
prominent strategist and arm\'-builder of 
the northern side, but his fondness for 
compromise, his stem militarism and his 
pathetic concern for the lives and well- 
being of his soldiers were so resented b\' 
impatient democracy as to relegate him to 
temporar}' obscurity. The wars of radi- 
cal democracy during the first French re- 
public, in our own later struggles, and in 
South Africa, were blood\- and destructive 
of material resources; >'es, even ruthless 
and unprincipled and atrocious. Despair 
begets madness and scouts agreements 
made in time of peace to ameliorate war- 
like brutalitw There is a strateg>^ of 
peace as well as of war: there would have 
been no Civil War in America had we 
possessed an army proportionate to the 
then existing navy in size, in discipline, 
and in lo>alt>-. It was a thoroughh* 
democratic navy, far more democratic 
than the army, because its personnel was 
far removed in the performance of duty 
from political strife and social pretensions. 
It saw the countr\' from without as well 
as from within, and the sailors of every 
rank from ever>' section were, with rare 
exceptions, passionately loyal to the 
L'nion. Our navy was and remains a 
superb example of democratic etficiency 
for purposes of defensive war. 



Provided we avoid the loose thinking 
that accompanies uncertain language, and 
reduce the concept of democracy to the 
definite limits expressed b\' a state of 
mind, we shall see the world of to-da>' as it 
is. Emperor, king, president, consul or 
chief magistrate; he is a monarch abso- 
lute, sa}'s the people, while and when he 
does our will. Even the papac\-, in the 
opinion of the most learned doctors of the 
church throughout the ages, expresses the 
will of God because founded on the will of 
the people: vox popidi, vox dei. At 
bottom all secular and political thought 
is, though it should not be, deistic rather 
than theistic, and this god in the form of 
popular will which sets up states and 
systems, even ecclesiastical rule, is a mere 
adumbration of the God who created men 
as political beings, even in their embr\-onic 
societies founded on guile, perpetuated in 
brains, and. by long-suffering, developed 
into nations. All government apparenth' 
rests on the deistic concept, even dem- 
ocratic government in its narrowest and 
concretest sense of rule by public opinion 
through powers adapted to make democ- 
racy' efficient alike in its peaceful evolu- 
tion, and in its defense against mob rule 
or foreign attack. Two things are es- 
sential to efficiency, efficient citizens and 
an efficient s\'stem. Of neither is there 
an absolute standard. 

In the long vistas of democratic evolu- 
tion, popular opinion has emplo>'ed every 
known form of social order and organiza- 
tion, monarchy and txranny; aristocracy 
and oligarch}', politeia and democracy. 
Trial has been made of despotism, of 
conspiracy, of ochlocrac\': each and all 
devices to put base men into power, each 
and all they have been discarded, often 
after discouraging, heartrending strug- 
gle and sacrifice, but the\^ have been 
discarded. Sur\'ivals of course there are: 
of privilege, personal and class; of un- 
equal representation and legislation, of 
judicial per\'ersion and misprision of 
justice. But for all that, the diplomacv 
of democracy, the moral and material 
well-being under democrac}', the swift, 
stern retort of war by democracy,all alike 



56 



WILLIAM M. SLOANE 



stand, if not as examples, at least as en- 
couragements to believe that in nothing is 
democracy feebler and that in most things 
it is healthier than other systems of society 
and politics. The divine right of the 
people is only another form of the divine 
right of kings as understood in our day. 
The president has just as much divine 
right in his representative character, and 
of the same kind, as a hereditary monarch, 
since everywhere and among all classes of 
civilized man the right to overturn a 
throne is the first article of faith. Ex- 
pediency is of course another matter. 
What is expedient in the United States 
of America we ourselves admit in practice 
is inexpedient and impossible in the 
United States of Mexico. The American 
doctrine of recognition was for a time 
based on the de facto principle; under the 
changed conditions of the Civil War and 
of international relations on this conti- 
nent, it has reverted to the de jure principle 
in many startling instances. Consist- 
ency in public law and foreign policy is 
far to seek. When Napoleon violated the 
neutrality of the little Duchy of Anhalt 
there were shouts of execration from all the 
monarchies; when the same monarchies 
adopted the Metternich system and 
violated the neutrality of the Sicilies and 
of Spain there was almost universal ap- 
plause. Aristocracies and democracies 
have been exactly as inconsistent one as 
the other. The appeal to self-preserva- 
tion, the declaration that the state is in 
danger seems to justify any breach of faith, 
and to turn treaties into waste paper. 

Many of you will remember that when 
Panurge proposed a "problematick'' 
theme: to wit whether he should marry or 
not marry, the faithful Trouillogan at 
first replied, yea or nay, both together; 
then on second thought he opined not the 
one nor the other. Which answers the 
mystified Panurge characterized as repug- 
nant and contradictory, exclaiming that 
he understands them not. Gargantua 
recalled the philosopher who said he 
owned his wife, although she did not own 
him. Rondibilis considered the answers 
like the "neuter in physick,'' neither sick 



nor healthful; or like the mean in philoso- 
phy, the abnegation of both extremes. 
Hippothades quoted the apostle: Those 
that are married, let them be as if they 
were not married: and those that have 
wives let them be as if they had no wives 
at all. 1 thus interpret, quoth Panta- 
gruel with finality the having and not 
having of a wife. To have a wife is to 
use her as nature hath ordained for the 
aid, society and solace of man, and propa- 
gating of his race : To have no wife is not 
to be uxorious, play the coward and be 
lazy about her and not for her sake to dis- 
dain the lustre of that affection which 
man owes to God; or yet to leave for her 
those oifices and duties which he owes 
unto his country, unto his friends and 
kindred; or for her to abandon and for- 
sake his precious studies and business of 
account; to wait still on her will, her beck, 
and her vapors. If we be pleased in this 
sense to consider the ''having'' and "not 
having'' a wife we shall indeed find no re- 
pugancy or contradiction in the terms at all . 
Our western world is wedded to democ- 
racy. There can be no question of "to 
marry or not to marry." Of "yea and 
nay, both together," and on second 
thought of "not the one nor the other," 
there is a large and grave question, and 
the best answer for us is that of Pantagruel. 
We are not to be, uxorious and play the 
coward, not for democracy's sake to 
scorn God and common sense, not to 
neglect the offices and duties we owe to 
country, friends and kindred, our pre- 
cious studies and business of account. 
Democracy exists for the aid and solace of 
Man and is to be used as nature hath 
ordained. You can no more circumscribe 
the democratic state of mind than you 
can the feminine. Held to strict ac- 
countability for the performance of its 
duty and its task, that state of mind has 
proved both adaptable and efficient, and 
if we who compose and manage the system 
are neither uxorious, cowardly, nor lazy, 
the system will prove like a good husband 
or a good wife the means of perpetuating 
and adorning the order of nature in poli- 
tics and society. 



WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER 



THE SHIPWRECK OF KLLTUR 
From "Germany vs. Civilization" 



Wherever Germany extends her swa\', she 
r?n";z5 Culture. 

Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, p. 38. 

Culture and the State are antagonists: a 
"Culture-State" is merel\' a modern idea. 
The one lives upon the other, the one flourishes 
at the expense of the other. ... In the 
history of European Culture the rise of the 
[German] Empire signifies, above all, a dis- 
placement of the centre of gravity. Every- 
where people are already aware of this: in 
things that realh' matter — and these after all 
constitute Culture — the Germans are no 
longer worth considering. 

The Tii-ilight of the Idols, p. 54. 

Every great crime against Culture for the 
last four centuries lies upon their [the German] 
conscience. 

Ecce Homo, p. 124. 

Man started among the beasts in whose 
struggle for existence there is the unending 
play and counterpla\' between brute force 
and cunning. Man became Man by 
sloughing off the qualities which chain the 
Beast forever to the Beasts' level. Meas- 
uring b>' geological ages we see him emerge 
with incredible slowness from Beast-hood 
into Man-hood; and so up through Sav- 
agery and Barbarism, till he stands erect 
on the lowest step of Civilization; and 
then he mounts, still with groping hesita- 
tion, with frequent pauses, and with 
actual backslidings, the ladder of Ideals. 
Gradually there dawn in him instincts, 
motives, which neither the Beast, the 
Savage, nor the Barbarian ever knows. 
These are the stuff through which he dis- 
covers that he has a soul, the august and 
awful inmate of his inmost self. 

Thenceforward Man fares on his jour- 
ney through life, a strange blend of animal 
and of spirit — the animal in him always on 
the alert to regain entire mastery, and the 



spirit, though often baffled and betrayed, 
ready to renew its divine mission. This 
antagonism runs through all human af- 
fairs; and w'hen the earliest moraHsts 
looked beneath the surface of life and ex- 
amined the fortunes and deeds of men, 
they discerned that this is a moral world 
in which the forces of good and the forces 
of evil — God and Devil — battle forever 
for control. Subsequent scrutiny has 
always reached the conclusion that the 
only permanent good is spiritual. Pride 
of intellect, beaut\' of form and face, the 
conquests of science over the material 
world, the triumphs of w^ar-lords after 
great battles won and imperial territories 
annexed — these are not the true measure 
of Civilization. True Civilization is of 
the spirit, whose treasure the world can 
neither give nor take awaw How ir- 
relevant, how external and fleeting in the 
presence of Emerson is the uncounted 
lucre of Cecil Rhodes or of Rockefeller! 
With what scorn w'ould Washington have 
repelled the suggestion that he should ex- 
change places with Frederick the Great! 
With what iron}' would Lincoln have dis- 
missed a proffered exchange with William 
11! To Washington and Lincoln the pos- 
sibility of being degraded to the level of 
Frederick and of William would have been 
abhorrent. 

So rapid has been Man's subjugation of 
Nature, and so astounding the inventions 
by which he has turned her laws into 
servants of his own will, that it has come 
to be the fashion to mistake these things 
for progress. We even hear them blithely 
lauded as essentials of Civilization. But 
Man, and not his tools, makes Civiliza- 
tion, and its character will be either ani- 
mal or spiritual according to his nature. 
Ability to shoot up in an express elevator 
to the top of a fifty-story New York sky- 



57 



58 



WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER 



scraper, or to motor a hundred miles in an 
hour, or to telephone across the continent, 
or to send messages by wireless telegraph, 
does not constitute Civilization. It took 
Shakespeare two days to ride on horse- 
back from Stratford to London; has 
poetry out-soared Shakespeare in these 
days when one can be whirled from Strat- 
ford to London in two hours? 

Inventions and ideas also bless or curse 
according to the spirit of their user. 
Hardly had printing been discovered, to 
bring incalculable benefit to mankind, 
before the Devil saw his profit in it, and 
he has kept the presses of the world sup- 
plied with copy ever since. The modern 
probing into Nature has already produced 
a state of mind in scientific investigators 
which awakens anxiety as to the source 
from which their knowledge springs. 
Many religions have had a foreboding 
that there dwells something at the heart 
of the world which should not be unveiled, 
some primordial terror which, like the 
Gorgon, blasts those who look upon it. 
To hide this from the common gaze, 
mysteries were devised which it was 
sacrilege to attempt to penetrate, and 
Faith, not Reason, was declared the door 
to the truth that saved. 

Modern Science, inquisitive and reso- 
lute, undaunted and tireless, has drilled its 
shafts of investigation, and has applied its 
microscope and its test-tube throughout 
the domain of Matter: and it has found 
Matter, and more Matter and nothing 
but Matter, apparently directed by mate- 
rial laws. The dyer's hand is subdued 
to what it works in. Assuming that 
there is a spirit in Man, might not that 
spirit be slowly stifled, materialiied, 
and finally extinguished by continuous 
devotion to Matter and material laws? 
Might it not even come to pass that the 
worship of these material laws which 
Science has evoked should undo Man, as 
Frankenstein was undone by the monster 
he created? What if the Germans — hav- 
ing drawn aside the veil from the last 
mystery — have seen that Moloch is the 
Prime Mover of the world? 

We cannot call material laws merciless, 



because they proceed from that which 
feels nothing. So human laws devised by 
materialists may be logically unfeeling; 
and the rulers of a people who have ac- 
cepted the revelation that Moloch is God 
will naturally develop a system patterned 
after Moloch's commands. Ponder this 
well. If the Prussian pagan creed is true, 
then Moloch is God: his altars are the 
shambles of battlefields; the sacrifices 
most acceptable to him are the victims of 
combat and massacre; the hymns he de- 
lights in are the shrieks of ravished women, 
the pitiful cries of terrified little children, 
the mingled groans and curses of wounded 
and dying soldiers. His high priests are 
those who lead the teeming millions to 
slaughter — Attila, and Tamerlane, and 
William 11 of Hohenzollern. This is the 
corner-stone of Kultur, this the infernal 
abyss into which Kultur has already 
dragged Germany and would drag man- 
kind. 

Ponder this well. No plea for a place 
in the sun can justify the cruelty and the 
cunning which its attaining involves. 
The pomp of many armies, all marching 
obedient to the command of Moloch's 
Vice-Regent, does not hide the butcher's 
errand on which they speed. The Reli- 
gion of Valor is a thin disguise for brutal- 
ity, in which Man at the touch of the 
Devil's wand is metamorphosed back into 
his Beast Original. Patriotism becomes 
the disguise under which the primal 
instincts of tiger and wolf riot unleashed. 
In Kultur's triumph Civilization dies. 

Kultur is not designed to benefit any 
other race except the German. If it 
conquered, it would revive the feudal re- 
lation of lord and vassal, Germany being 
the lord and all other peoples being her 
vassals. Kultur, as W€ have seen at 
every point in this survey, permits all 
things to the Germans. Their religion, 
their sense of honor and of mercy, their 
respect for common men apply only to 
themselves. German truth ceases to be 
truth when it crosses the frontier. Gott, 
the German deity, is a tribal god, made in 
the image of the Germans who created 
him. 



WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER 



59 



Shall we man-el most at the patience 
with which the Teutonic genius has re- 
ticulated such a s>"stem, or at the over- 
weening conceit with which each Teuton 
regards himself with supreme satisfaction 
and Kultur as the perfect Civilization 
which must be nailed down and riveted 
over the rest of the world? And what 
shall we sa\' of a nation which at this late 
day supposes that an\' one political sys- 
tem can be the best for all nations? If 
you view mankind as it is, divided into 
hundreds of varieties, each diifering from 
the others in traditions, in geographical 
environment, and in moral and intellec- 
tual capacity, you will surel\' conclude 
that to attempt to standardize them 
would be as fatuous as to wrap the earth 
in a uniform climate. Such fatuit\' is 
born in the brains of would-be world- 
conquerors. 

The great and deep and hol\' things of 
life do not come b\' the sword. World- 
conquerors by Frightfulness ma\- com- 
mand lip-ser\ice; they may batten on the 
fruits of their victim's labor: but the\- can- 
not command respect or friendship, lo\-- 
alty or love. Of all the conquering races, 
the Prussian has thus far been the least 
fitted to conciliate the vanquished. After 
one hundred and fort\- years Polish Prus- 
sia, although it has suffered uninter- 
mitted persecution, remains Polish in de- 
sires and hopes and still requires to be 
terrified. Fort\'-five \-ears of Prussian 
hectoring in Alsace and Lorraine have not 
diminished by a hair's breadth the French 
spirit there. In their more recent colonial 
possessions the Germans have not even 
pretended to wish to secure the good-will 
of their subjects, it being a dogma of 
Kultur that the dark-skinned races are in 
fact only animals, to be treated as such. 

But above political and militar>' s>s- 
tems. above tribal customs and standards 
conditioned b\' climate, are a few hal- 
lowed principles which sum up the ideals 
of civilized men, ideals which even the 
least civilized have acknowledged, and all 
have endeavored, according to their var\- 
ing capacit)-, to serve. Justice is one of 



these principles; Freedom is another; 
Pit>-, another. 

The State worshiped b>' the Germans as 
an abstraction "above Society" is indeed 
just as personal as was its medieval proto- 
t\-pe. But in the Middle Ages, Church 
and State went together; and the Church, 
which was the organ of religion, exercised, 
in theory at least, authority over the 
State in those matters into which religion 
or morals entered. But mark well that 
in the s\stem devised b>- Kultur, the 
State is omnipotent. Kultur recognizes 
neither morals nor religion apart from |x>- 
litical considerations. The conscience of 
the Germans and their public and private 
acts are in the keeping of this godless ab- 
straction. No wonder that poor old 
Haeckel shouts out his octogenarian re- 
joicing that the war has proved that God 
and immortalit\- are absurd delusions, 
and that Kultur is the highest achieve- 
ment of Man. 

I quote from a private letter, written b\' 
an eminent ph\'sician with the British 
expedition in France to a distinguished 
American ph\sician : — 

With all my soul I believe that the ideal of 
pity is the noblest thing we have, and that its 
denial, which waves on ever\' German tlag, is 
the denial of all that the greatest men have 
striven for for centuries. 1 see in this war the 
colossal strife between the doctrine which I call 
good, and der Geist der siets verneint. You see I 
am almost borrowing the language of the 
Kaiser. I feel that the two enormous spirits 
that move this world are sho\s'ing their weap- 
ons almost visibl\', and that never was the 
garment of the living world so thin over the 
gods that it conceals. 

I am not much elated by the thought. I 
have little opinion of providence as an ally. I 
am surprised at the weakness that the Kaiser 
shows for his pocket Deitw What we have to 
do in my opinion we do ourselves, and our task 
is none the lighter that we defend the right. 
But I am hardened and set by the thing I be- 
lieve. I and my dear boy* talked of it much 
as I am talking to you, for we were close friends 
and we felt, both of us, that we were fighting 
for the life of England — > es, for the safety of 
France — \es, for the sanctity of treaties — 



* The son had recently been killed. 



6o 



WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER 



yes, but, behind these secondary and com- 
paratively material issues, for something far 
deeper, far greater, for something so great 
and deep that, if our efforts fail, I pray God I 
may die before I see it. 

Kultur, which shuts out Justice and 
Freedom and Pity, shuts out Chivalry 
also, which, if it be not fundamental like 
these three, is the fragrance of the higher 
Civilization. Saladin, the Arab, had it, 
in his conflict with the Crusaders. It 
was the ideal of every worthy knight in 
Christendom; it is a second nature to 
every modern gentleman. Grant had 
it at Appomattox, when he bade the 
vanquished officers of the Confederacy to 
keep their side-arms, and spared them the 
slightest suggestion of humiliation. But 
Chivalry seems to have found no lodg- 
ment in Prussia. I recall no generous 
act of Frederick the Great, or of Bismarck 
when he imposed terms on fallen France. 
The Prussian is not satiated by the over- 
throw of his enemies; he must see them 
prostrate in the dust and plant his heavy 
foot upon their necks. 

A nation accessible to Chivalry would 
neither have ordered the torpedoing of the 
passenger ship Lusitania filled with non- 
combatants, nor have gloated over the 
crime, holding great meetings for exulta- 
tion and gathering the children of the 
Fatherland into theatres and churches to 
sing hallelujahs over the destruction of 
those twelve hundred innocent souls. I 
turn away from such barbaric rejoicings 
to the pictures of the sea strewn with the 
bodies of drowned babies and of drowned 
mothers clasping their little ones in their 
arms. Happy those little ones, who could 
never grow up to have hearts like the 
Germans, bereft alike of Chivalry and of 
Pity! Happy, too, those mothers, who 
displa>'ed in the swift, final test of life that 
mother-love which neither Kaiser, Krupp, 
nor Kultur can vanquish. 

Where was Chivalry when Von Bissing, 
the Prussian Governor of Belgium, or- 
dered Edith Cavell's execution? If she 
had been guilty of the worst crimes im- 
puted to her, she might at least have been 



put to death with decency. Instead of 
that, Bissing let only a few hours inter- 
vene between her condemnation and 
her being led out at two o'clock in the 
morning to face the platoon of soldiers. 
No respite allowed for reviewing the evi- 
dence; no person except the prison chap- 
lain permitted to see her; no friend to take 
her last message; all hurried, clandestine, 
ruthless, as if Von Bissing feared that he 
might be deprived of his victim; he, 
backed by the full power of Germany; 
she, one woman alone in an impregnable 
cell, ringed about by a fortress with 
regiments to defend it. And when they 
had shot her. Von Bissing's agents, wish- 
ing to debase her memory, gave out to the 
papers that she had quailed and broken 
down and pleaded for mercy: but the 
prison chaplain told the truth. Such is 
Chivalry as practiced by WiUiam IPs 
chosen officers. 

Thus, wherever we test it, Kultur 
breaks down. It has created a nation 
which boasts itself superior to the common 
laws of humanity; a nation which asserts 
that Honor and Justice and Truth, that 
Pity and Chivalry and Self-sacrifice, have 
no meaning for it in its dealings with the 
whole world outside. It might as well 
assert that the law of gravity or the 
formulas of algebra applicable elsewhere 
ceased to operate on German soil. 
Kultur, proclaimed by the Germans as a 
system which will overspread the earth, 
is in reality not universal, but local, 
tribal, narrowing. No modern race ex- 
cept the Germans could have invented it; 
so only Germans can both use it and glory 
in its use. It is like the harness of steel 
and straps which a cripple has to wear: 
by practice he learns to move about in it 
with ease; but though he be a giant, he 
is none the less a cripple, and the steel 
and straps are none the less a harness. 

" But what!" you ask; "has not Kultur 
produced the highest efficiency ever 
known to man? Has it not trained sixty 
millions to such mechanical skill and 
mental docility that at a signal from Ber- 
lin they all turn east and bow in unison, 
and at another signal they all turn west? 



WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER 



6i 



Has not Kultur created an arm>- so per- 
fect that its units and indiNiduals could 
hardl\' be more machine-like if the\' were 
actually cogs and bolts of iron? Has not 
Kultur resulted in a s\'stem of education 
which directs every German at ever> 
moment of his life from the da\' he enters 
the Kindergarten to the da\' when he be- 
comes a doctor of philosophx? Has not 
Kultur applied science to industry* and to 
commerce as well as to the most trifling 
daily needs? Has it not subjected reli- 
gion and philosoph\', poetrv*, histor>', and 
letters, to the microscope of criticism? 
Has an\' other s\*stem imposed an equall\' 
rigid discipline or been rewarded b\' 
an equall\' submissive obedience?" 

To all these questions there is but one 
ans\^^er: Kultur has achieved this, and the 
achievement marks at once the glor)' and 
shipwTeck of Kultur. The object of 
every beneficent teaching is to take even 
human clods and evoke the souls latent 
in them; Kultur takes Germans and 
reduces them to the state of soulless 
machines. Ef!icienc\' i 
praiseworthy than is 
vital consideration is, 
and for what purpose. 
evil, then the harm done is greater in 
proportion to the greater efficiencw 
The voltage of a lightning bolt which sets 
fire to a to>Mi might suppl>' power to run 
a dozen factories. Granted that Kultur- 
made efficienc}' ranks first, has it been 
justified by its works? Are the s\ stem 
which plotted for the Atrocious War, and 
the efficienc>' which has conducted it, to 
be commended as the final crown of 
Q\ilization? Would \ou who read be 
proud of > our scheme of life if it revealed 
you as cruel, dishonorable, hing, un- 
chivalrous, and as an egomaniac who did 
not shrink at murder? Under the touch- 
stone of Kultur collective Germany stands 
so revealed. Satan, who turns all mate- 
rial inventions to his own uses, and sucks 
out the souls of men in order that their 
bodies and their minds ma>' serve him, is 
the Master of that Efficiency for Hate 
which Kultur has bred in Germany. 

"We don't care how many nations 



of itself no more 

electricit>-. The 

who applies it 

If the object be 



hate us, so long as the\- fear us," said 
recently a leader of German opinion. 
In such words Kultur epitomizes its 
message to mankind; in such words 
posterit\' \sill write its epitaph. 

Kultur has had many forerunners, dif- 
fering in specific aim and in scale, but 
similar in character. The Spanish In- 
quisition, for instance, was in essence al- 
most the exact counterpart of Kultur. 
It strove to comj)el absolute submission to 
itself as the agency "above Society," not 
of the Prussian Gott, but of a per\'ersion 
of the Christian God. The Inquisition 
threw over Humanity, Justice, Mercy, 
and set up standards of its o\sti, intended 
to promote onl\' its ovsti interests. To 
secure conformity and obedience, it im- 
prisoned, harassed, terrorized, tortured, 
and destro>-ed its victims. Like Kultur, 
the Inquisition maintained a large corps of 
eavesdroppers and spies. Like Kultur, 
it taught a nation to accept xsithout demur 
its declaration that it was engaged in the 
highest mission kno^vn to mankind. It 
did not, indeed, organize an arm\' to wage 
bodily war against its enemies: it simply 
used, in case of need, the armed force of 
terr^poral rulers to carr>' out its commands. 
It both aspired to be and was a world- 
power, in so far as it was co-extensive with 
the Spanish Empire. 

Millions of i>eople accepted the teach- 
ings of the Inquisition and fell quite 
naturalh" into the inhuman state of mind 
which such teachings induce. Like many 
a German who would personally shrink 
from committing cruel acts, the Spaniards 
and the other races whom the Inquisition 
held in subjection came to gloat over col- 
lective crueltv'. How man\' millions of 
hoHda\'-makers, men, women, and chil- 
dren, went out from Seville to the Ouem- 
adero and witnessed \\ith rejoicing the 
auios-da-fc of thirty-five thousand heretics 
whom the Inquisition burned there in the 
course of three centuries? The feelings 
of those Spanish spectators, as the>' be- 
held such human sacrifice offered up by 
the Inquisition to its deity, did not differ 
from those of the .Aztecs who watched the 
blood sacrifices on their p}ramid temples. 



62 



ABBOTT H. THAYER 



or from those of the French Terrorists 
who attended the dail\- exercise of the 
guillotine, or from those of the Germans 
who shouted their hallelujahs at the 
slaughter of the innocents in the 
Lusitania. 

Under whatever name Kultur operates, 
U tends downward. The individual who 



thinks himself a Superman is likely to 
end in a madhouse or on the gallows: the 
nation, despotic king, or hierarchy, which 
substitutes its own selfish interests for 
humanitw shuts itself out from humanity, 
becomes inhuman, revives and worships 
standards of the Beast, and heads straight 
for perdition. 



ABBOTT H. THAYER 



I did all 1 was fitted for, toward helping 
the Allies, b>' hurrying over to England 
early in the war, and seeing that the>- made 
good application of m>' concealing colora- 
tion discoveries to their army and navw 

The>' told me, over there, that the 
French got their camouflage entireh' 



from m\' book. God knows that human- 
it} 's cause at this ghastly moment could 
have the whole of me if it would help. 

Fortunatel)' we all know that it is 
always these immeasurable torture-fires 
out of which the world goes on getting 
her pure gold. 



HENRY \AN DYKE 
Late Ambassador to Holland 

THE CRIME OF THE Ll'SITASIA 

EXTR_\CT FROM AN ADDRESS AT THE AUTHORS ClUB, NoVE>'.BER I. I917. 



Now that we ha\e been forced into this 
war b\' the Imperial German menaces and 
attacks, the great dut\' for all of us is to 
realize fiill\' what we have at stake, and 
to spare no effort to win the real victor>- 
for our righteous cause. 

We are fighting for libert\- and the life 
of our countr}', just as trul>- as we did in 
the Revolution or in the Civil War. 

Free speech is precious. But there is 
one thing much more precious, and that 
is the preser\'ation of the freedom of 
the republic. Any inhabitant of this 
coimtr>' who puts destructive material 
into the machiner>' of the ships which 
are canning our brave bo\s across the 
ocean to serve under our flag, is a con- 
structive murderer and a traitor. He 
should face a traitor's trial and a traitor's 
doom. Shooting would be too good for 
him. If convicted he should be hanged 
without delaw The same thing is true of 
ever>' man who puts destructive material 
into the minds of our American citizens. 
urging them to be dislo>'al or recalcitrant. 
persuading them to evade or to resist the 
call which our countr\' has made for the 
service of all its people in the defence of its 
rights and its honor. These men are in 
fact trying to obstruct and impede the 
action of the Ship of State. They are 
imperilling the unity, the welfare, the 
success of our countr>" in this great strug- 
gle which has been forced upon her by 
Germany. Let them reckon with their 
own conscience in the sight of God for 
their private thoughts and feelings. But 
if the>' speak treason, or act treason, or 
incite others to treason, the>' also must 
face a traitor's trial and a traitor's doom. 
For while the>' go at large and continue 
their nefarious work, they imperil the 
lives of thousands of lo>al citizens and 
the safety of the republic. 



I have reall\' no speech to make to \ou 
to-night, gentlemen, except that which is 
contained and embodied in this bit of 
bronze, — a hideous medal struck in Ger- 
many to commemorate the unla\s-ful and 
cruel sinking of the steamship Lusitania. 
^'ou know the stor>' of that crime. On 
the 7th of May, 191 5, this great passenger 
vessel, unarmed, and crowded ^ith human 
beings, going their la\^"ful errands upon 
the sea. was torpedoed and sunk off the 
coast of Ireland by a German submarine. 
More than a thousand human beings lost 
their lives in consequence of this atro- 
cious misdeed. Among them were one 
hundred and fourteen innocent and help- 
less American men, women and children. 
The\ were drowned \^ithout pit\', 

" Butchered to make a [German] holiday/' 

The hoHday was celebrated certainl}' in 
Prussia, and perhaps in other parts of the 
German Empire. The little German chil- 
dren made merr>- over the death of the 
American children. The soldiers in the 
reser\"e camps joined in the jubilation. 
The streets were full of flags, and the air 
resounded v^ith cheering and singing. A 
German pastor in a series of discourses on 
the Sermon on the Mount, said: '"Who- 
ever cannot bring himself to approve from 
the bottom of his heart the sinking of the 
Lusitania, him we judge to be no true Ger- 
man. " ( Deutsche Reden In Schwerer Zeii, 
No. 24, p. 7.) 

To cro\sTi all. medals were struck to 
commemorate this glorious achievement 
of a German U-boat. This is one of them. 
On one side it shows a ticket office with 
Death at the window giving out tickets 
to the innocent passengers. On the other 
side it shows the great ship going dowTi 
stem foremost (as a matter of fact she 



^ 



64 



HENRY VAN DYKE 



sank bow first) and underneath is the in- 
scription, " Big passenger Hner Lusitania, 
sunk by German submarine, ^th of May, 

Why this discrepancy in dates? Be- 
cause the 5th of May, according to the 
Potsdam time table, was the date ap- 
pointed for the crime. But the Lusitania 
was detained for two days in New York, 
and so the assassination could not be car- 
ried out until the 7th. But the medals 
were already prepared with the earlier 
date on them, and this date must have 
been given to the maker of the medal by 
the German Admiralty. Thus the fact 



that the crime was premeditated and com- 
mitted with malice aforethought and pre- 
pense, is immortalized in bronze. It is a 
beastly, ugly medal, a characteristic work 
of modern German art. But 1 keep it as a 
memento, "lest 1 forget." 

In my honest judgment it is impossible 
for decent people in the sight of the right- 
eous God, to talk peace or make peace 
with the criminals who instigated, plotted 
and ordered this crime, until they have 
been brought to repentance. 

For such evil-doers there can be no peace 
and no forgiveness unless they renounce 
their evil deeds and make reparation. 



MARE LIBERUM 
From "The Red Flower, Poems Written in War Time' 



You dare to say with perjured lips, 
"We fight to make the ocean free"? 

You, whose black trail of butchered ships 
Bestrews the bed of every sea 

Where German submarines have wrought 

Their horrors ! Have you never thought, — 
What you call freedom, men call piracy! 

II 

Unnumbered ghosts that haunt the wave, 
Where you have murdered, cry you down ; 

And seamen whom you would not save 
Weave now in weed-grown depths a crown 

Of shame for your imperious head, — 

A dark memorial of the dead, — 

Women and children whom you sent to drown. 



Ill 

Nay, not till thieves are set to guard 
The gold, and corsairs called to keep 

O'er peaceful commerce watch and ward. 
And wolves to herd the helpless sheep. 

Shall men and women look to thee. 

Thou ruthless Old Man of the Sea, 
To safeguard law and freedom on the deep ! 



HENRY VAN DYKE 65 



IV 

In nobler breeds we put our trust: \ 

The nations in whose sacred lore I 

The "Ought" stands out above the " Must/' | 

And honor rules in peace and war. • j 

With these we hold in soul and heart, ■ 

With these we choose our lot and part, i 

Till Liberty is safe on sea and shore. i 

London Times, February 12, 191 7. 1 



THE NAME OF FRANCE 

Give us a name to fill the mind 

With the shining thoughts that lead mankind, — 
The glory of learning, the joy of art, — 
A name that tells of a splendid part 

In the long, long toil, and the strenuous fight, 
Of the human race to win its way 
From the ancient darkness into the day 

Of freedom, brotherhood, equal right, — 

A name like a star, a name of light. 
I give you, France! 

Give us a name to stir the blood 

With a warmer glow and a swifter flood, 

At the touch of a courage that conquers fear, — 
A name like the call of a trumpet, clear 

And silver-sweet and iron-strong. 

That brings three million men to their feet, 
Ready to march, and steady to meet 

The foe who threatens that name with wrong, — 

A name that rings like a battle-song. 
1 give you, France! 

Give us a name to move the heart 

With the strength that noble griefs impart, — 

A name that speaks of the blood out-poured 

To save mankind from the sway of the sword, — 
A name that calls the world to share 

The burden of sacrificial strife, 

Where the cause at stake is the world's free life 
And the rule of the people everywhere,^ 
A name like a vow, a name like a prayer. 
I give you, France! 



September 28, 1916. 



BARRETT WENDELL 



A CONFLICT OF IDEALS 
Extract From Address in the Academy Lecture Series, April 17, 191 7 



Chaos come again, we may well call this 
world of ours now; and turn back to the 
despair of Lucretius as the final mood in 
which bravely to face fact. If a story I 
was told some years ago be true, though, 
this was not the mood of at least one 
distinguished ecclesiastic, about the time 
when the Concordat came to an end. 
Lamenting the plight of the French clergy, 
it was said, this worthy man — himself of 
saintly character — touched on the general 
condition of Europe, expressing his belief 
in the divine sanction of sovereignty, and 
declaring that only one modern sovereign 
conducted himself with due obedience 
thereto — the German Emperor. To be 
sure, he added, that sovereign is blind to 
the true faith; but it is not for men to 
inquire why God chooses His instruments. 
Hearsay though this story be, it may well 
give us pause. There is certainly an 
aspect in which the career of William the 
Second may be regarded as almost Augus- 
tan, as an ideal effort to impose upon the 
turbulent peoples the rule of peace, 
sparing those who will submit, extirpa- 
ting the rebellious. And we may grant 
that he believes in God; and we must 
grant, as well, that the two most charac- 
teristic German virtues — honest, untiring 
industry and cheerful acceptance of col- 
lective duty — have never been more 
admirable than they are now. All the 
same, there is another aspect in which we 
can hardly admit the career of His Im- 
perial Majesty to be apostolically divine. 

Otherwise, we should have to admit 
ourselves, and the other nations now 
allied together against him, impiously 
rebellious to the law of God. Instead, 
there can be no doubt that we believe 
ourselves nobly in the right; nor that we 
are coming to believe the Allied Nations, 
who have led the way where at last we 
follow, nobly in the right, as well. Nobly 



in the right we could not believe our- 
selves nor them, unless this tremendous 
conflict involves something else than a 
blind clash of material forces. 

Yet to deny an ideal, and an ideal of 
world-order, to the forces so appallingly 
exerted in the name of the German Em- 
peror, would be unworthy. So far as 
we can discern, the ideal which inspires 
them is that of an authority which shall 
command and control all men, for their 
own good and the good of the future. 
This, indeed, was implicitly admitted, a 
little while ago, by a fantastic notion 
which occurred to one of those among us 
who cherishes least love for Germans. It 
was when their lines in Northern France 
began to withdraw, and when some 
thought the purpose of this manoeuvre 
to be concentration for a swift attack on 
Italy. Can it be, this American asked, 
that the German Emperor has a purpose 
of sweeping down on Rome, and there in 
St. Peter's — where Charlemagne was 
crowned before him one Christmas Day 
— celebrating next Christmas by placing 
on his own head the crown not of German 
Empire but of Roman, which should 
carry apostolic title to empire of the 
world? Fantastic though this notion 
be, it does not seem out of character, and 
it extremely indicates the imperial ideal 
against which the Allies, and we too, find 
ourselves arrayed. This ideal is not con- 
temptible; for contradiction it needs 
something higher than force and more 
enduring than denial. It can be met 
only by another, equally ardent and newly 
true, ideal of empire. 

Such an ideal, I believe, not yet rightly 
recognized, has animated the undaunted 
courage of the Allies; such an ideal, 1 
believe, has always animated our Ameri- 
can national history, and at this moment 
animates our national course. The Allies, 



66 



BARRETT WENDELL 



67 



— like ourselves and the German Empire, 
too, — still think in the national terms 
which have been inevitable since the 
ideal of the Holy Roman Empire faded, 
six hundred years ago. All the same, a 
new ideal of empire truly inspires us, even 
though as yet we know it only by the 
vague and vulgar name of democracy. 

For the moment, the fact of democracy 
often looks troublous — justifying the use 
of the term in the Politics of Aristotle. 
There he gives the name to the abuse of 
power by an irresponsible majority who 
would conduct public affairs not for public 
good but for their own selfish ends. Ac- 
cording to him, democracy is a disease, 
and probably politically fatal — just as 
tyranny is in monarchy and oligarchy in 
aristocracy. Right and left, nowadays, 
popular governments seem, on the sur- 
face, to afford example after example of 
what he meant — shackling ability, de- 
crying excellence and asserting privilege 
for the irresponsible. At their worst, 
however, these democratic excesses are 
only realities, which need no more quench 
the ideal they dim than the ideal of im- 
perial authority has been quenched by 
the rape of Belgium, by the Lusitania 
massacre, or by the sacrilege of Rheims. 
Any government, autocratic, aristocratic 
or popular, may abuse its power; any 
government must do so at its own ulti- 
mate peril. The question before us now 
concerns not dangers but hopes, not con- 
duct but faith, not the benumbing facts 
of realities but the inspiring potency of 
ideals. For an ideal, 1 believe, is what 
nerves us all for the conflict where we 
must bear our part. 

In few words, the ideal which inspires 
the peoples now staking their lives for 
what they call democracy is belief that 
government may best and most hope- 
fully persist when based not on submis- 
sion but on consent. Under the most 
popular forms of government, the gov- 
erned must doubtless submit to no small 
degree of authority; under the most 
despotic forms, until these forms crash 
in revolutionary anarchy, the governed 
must, often despairingly, consent to bear 



their burdens. No government worth 
the name can command respect, or hope 
to last, if it fail to preserve that public 
order, and to protect that private prop- 
erty on which together throughout his- 
tory the true right of individuals has 
inevitably been based. In substance, 
I take it, we should all agree that 
no individual can claim more than the 
right so to conduct life that the con- 
structive virtues of intelligence, indus- 
try and self-control may on the whole 
bring a man prosperity, and the destruc- 
tive vices of stupidity, idleness and self- 
indulgence may surely bring a man to 
grief. Social justice, we may gladly 
believe, is based on a natural law too 
rigid for much deflection by the forms 
which now and again government may 
chance to take. The real question is 
under what form it may most hopefully 
be maintained. The older ideal has 
believed this to be the form of implacable 
authority — sometimes national, at least 
once divinely imperial The newer ideal 
believes rather that the most hopeful 
form is that to which men themselves 
will gravely, deliberately and, so far as 
may be, unselfishly consent. In its nobler 
aspect, the older ideal was of a world 
governed by God through certain of His 
selected and commissioned creatures; in its 
nobler aspect, the newer ideal, for which 
we are now risen to arms, is of a world 
governed by God through all His human 
creatures. To call it democracy is to 
disguise its grandeur; a better name for it 
were the Empire of Humanity. 

Ideals, we must sadly remind ourselves, 
have never been realities and never can 
be. A thousand aspects of human his- 
tory, too, may well make our new imperial 
ideal seem more madly unreal than any 
of those which have preceded it, national, 
patriotic, Roman or Holy. Yet as we 
ponder on literature, from the primal 
wisdom of the Greeks to the sophistica- 
tions of centuries within the memory of 
men we can remember, and to the ephem- 
eral vulgarities of our modern press, we 
can find traces of this imperial ideal al- 
ways and everywhere. Slowly and won*- 



68 



BARRETT WENDELL 



deringly we may be brought to admit 
that it has not only shown sparks of 
vitaHty and germs of growth, but that it 
has tended straight toward the cathoHcity 
it is reveahng now. What is more, when 
we turn our pondering from the ideals of 
literature to the realities of history, we 
may find in them not the forever unat- 
tainable fact of realization, but sign after 
sign that our ideal of consenting human 
empire may perhaps be capable of an 
approach such as has been denied all 
others. 

An example of what I mean may be 
found in the history of our own country. 
Beginning its course under the first two 
Stuart sovereigns of England, it came to 
establish in all the colonies which fringed 
the Atlantic seaboard forms of govern- 
ment essentially popular. To a great 
degree, this was a matter not so much of 
ideal purpose as of natural growth, — of 
accident, or of practical convenience. 
The fact remains that when the lapse of 
some five generations brought us to the 
test of the American Revolution, our 
traditions of government by consent 
proved so firmly established as not only 
to achieve our national independence but 
a little later to check anarchy and to 
sustain order, property and individual 
rights by that supreme masterpiece of 
government by consent, the Constitution 
of the United States. There have been 
shadows and perils in our subsequent 
national history, enough and to spare; 
shadows and perils encompass us at this 
moment. What we may still recognize, 
however, as the characteristic spirit of 
America lays little, perhaps too little, 
stress on these realities. It still prefers 
to find constant inspiration, unbroken 
warrant for faith and hope, in the ideals 
of government which have animated our 
progress from a group of separate and 
remote colonies to that state of nationally 
imperial dominion of which we are citi- 
zens today. 

Meanwhile, no other government in 
the European world has changed so little 
since our Constitution was adopted by 
our forefathers. In 1789 we were the 



youngest of European nations; in 1917 
we are politically and socially the eldest. 
There is surely an aspect in which we 
may regard this as something else than 
accident — as a confirmation, rather, of 
our belief that we have been privileged 
to see, a little sooner than others, the 
course which shall be taken by the world- 
empire of the future. 

For aspiration to world-empire is an 
ideal so constant, so invariable, that, at 
least as an ideal, we must admit it inevi- 
table. If it takes on, as at first, the guise 
of irresponsible national expansion, it 
must fail as soon as the strength of the 
nation fails which for the moment em- 
bodies it — Egypt or Macedon, Spain or 
the France of Louis the Fourteenth. So 
it must fail if it takes on the form most 
nobly expressed by Virgil — of armed 
authority, responsible to its own con- 
science for imposing peace on the sub- 
missive peoples. So it must fail, too, in 
its highest authoritative form — that of 
the Holy Roman Empire — a form so 
splendidly superhuman that it never 
came anywhere near realization. So, no 
doubt, it must finally fail in any form; 
for, like human life, this planet where for 
a little while we are alive is mortal. Even 
so, even on earth, a humanized ideal of 
empire may long outlive ourselves or any 
phase of human persistence as yet within 
our powers of imagination. And if what 
I have tried to tell you today be not all a 
dream, the history of these United States 
of America may already give us hope that 
the ideal of future world-empire may 
prove to be an ideal not of empire by 
authority but of empire by consent. If 
so, this country of ours — the United 
States of America — may show itself to 
have been the harbinger of a world- 
empire which shall outlast those of the 
past. 

What will come of this war on which 
we are now entered no man can tell. 
What may come of it is an attempt to 
establish by common consent a world- 
empire in which each state, large or 
small, — monarchic, aristocratic or popu- 
lar, — shall have an acknowledged right 



BARRETT WENDELL 69 

to independent existence. In such an and devoted consent of all. That name 

empire the common authority of all has not yet been even proposed, except 

would protect the independence of each in vaguely general terms, like a League to 

part, enforcing the law of peace, sparing Enforce Peace. But we of the United 

those who submit to it, checking aggres- States of America may surely be forgiven 

sion, suppressing rebellion. All this such if we think of it as a name in which, as in 

common authority must do, not in a the name of our own country, all sep- 

name foreign to any, but in a name com- arate names may merge — the United 

mon to every part — for such common States of the World, 
authority must be based on the humble 



BRAND WHITLOCK 
LAFAYETTE, APOSTLE OF LIBERTY 

Address Given at the Tomb of Lafayette in Picpus Cemetery, July 4, 191 7, 
BY THE American Minister to Belgium 



Mr. Chairman, Monsieur le Ministre, 
Monsieur le Marechal, Mr. Ambass- 
ador, Ladies and Gentlemen: 

At long intervals in the progress of our 
race, once or twice in a century perhaps, 
there is born into the world one of those 
rare and lofty souls whose passion for 
humanity makes them worthy to be 
intrusted with the cause of human liberty. 
They are born with a vision, a courage 
and a faith that lift them high above 
their fellows and yet their love and sym- 
pathy and pity keep them close to the 
heart of mankind. By their sacrifices 
and their toils they work new emancipa- 
tions and they come somehow to sum up, 
and to express in their great personalities, 
their peoples and their times. The story 
of their lives is the history of the nations 
— as with Washington and Lincoln, as 
with him at whose tomb we are assem- 
bled today. 

It was the distinction of Lafayette, 
indeed, to sum up the history of two 
nations in his time. For, as he used to 
say, he had two countries, France and 
America, and he seemed to fmd it difficult 
to say which he loved the more. With 
his keen perception he discerned that in 
essential, spiritual ways the two nations, 
inspired by the same motives and devoted 
to the same ideals, were but a part of 
that larger nation of the mind, where all 
who love liberty and mankind are citi- 
zens by right. 

There are few stories more romantic 
than his. As an ardent youth, not yet 
twenty years of age, without the consent 
of his father or his King, he sets forth 
across the seas on that matchless adven- 
ture, the old yet ever new and alluring 
quest of human liberty. 

We see him before that first Congress 



in the old Liberty Hall at Philadelphia; 
then by the side of Washington, who 
comes so to love him that when he is 
wounded at Brandy wine Washington 
tells the surgeons to treat him as his son. 
He has an honored place in the councils 
of war and he "shudders to think that 
the voice of a twenty-year-old youth 
might decide the fate of two worlds.*' 
Then the long winter at Valley Forge, 
where the snows are reddened by bleeding 
feet, and, with the sword that Congress 
gave him, he comes back to France for 
succor and returns with the army corps 
that went with Rochambeau. Finally, 
he is at Yorktown, and four years later 
is once more in America at Mount Ver- 
non, the guest of Washington. He is 
elected a citizen of the Republic and 
adopted into the very heart of the nation. 
Every one refers to him affectionately as 
"The Marquis," while the Indians call 
him " Kayewla.'' All over the land, towns 
are named for him; there is not a city in 
America that has not an avenue bearing 
his name, and, as children in our schools, 
we are taught to revere him. 

We see him then engage in the struggle 
for liberty in his own land; he is at the 
assembly of the Notables and drafts the 
Declaration of the Rights of Man. And 
ever after, whether at Paris, at Olmutz 
or at Lagrange, down to the memorable 
days of July, 1830, it is for liberty that 
he strives, it is of liberty that he writes 
and dreams; "la liberte americaine," he 
used to call it. 

To us his correspondence with his 
friends in America must ever have a 
peculiar personal interest. He was al- 
ways writing to them, to Washington, 
to Jefferson, to Adams, to Monroe, to 
J. Fenimore Cooper. Jefferson, when 



70 



BRAND WHITLOCK 



71 



President, after the purchase of Louisiana, 
offered him the governorship of the new 
province if he would come back, and 
Hamilton, the great rival of Jefferson, 
wrote him that there was only one sub- 
ject on which the various parties in 
America could agree and that was in their 
love for him. 

The thought of returning to America 
continually fascinated him; he was al- 
ways referring to it. And it must have 
been a moment big in its implications 
when in his old age he made that last 
visit and there, under the stately portico 
of Monticello, he and Jefferson clasped 
each other in a long embrace. When he 
died, and old Andrew Jackson in an order 
of the day announced that the last 
Major-General of the armies of the Revo- 
lution was no more, the same military 
honors that had been paid to Washington 
were rendered to him, guns were fired 
until the sun went down, flags were at 
half mast, the army wore mourning for 
six months, and in the Senate, in the 
presence of the President, the two houses 
and the diplomatic corps, John Quincy 
Adams pronounced an oration in his 
memory. 

We assemble then at his tomb at this 
solemn moment in the history of the 
world, on this day that meant so much 
to him and means so much to us, to pay 
our tribute to his memory and to render 
homage to the nation whose various vir- 
tues were so nobly exemplified in his 
character and career. We come to rev- 
erence the memory not only of our sons 
who fell in other wars for liberty, but 
to salute those who have fallen in this 
great and, as we would fain believe, this 
final war for liberty, those noble dead who 
fell heroically at the Marne, on the Yser 
at Verdun, on the Somme, giving their 
lives that freedom might not perish from 
the earth, those boys, your own and ours, 
French, English, Belgian, who went for- 
ward with smiles upon their beardless 
lips, and in John Hay's fine figure are 
triumphant now in the beautiful immor- 
tality of youth. 

The ground whereon we stand today 



is not foreign soil, for when France came 
to bury her hero, America claimed a 
privilege of affection and sent her earth 
from our own land that it might be min- 
gled with the soil of France, as a last 
resting-place for him who was the son of 
both. Even were it otherwise, it would 
not be foreign soil, for the soil of liberty is 
always home to him who loves liberty. 

This day meant much to Lafayette all 
his life, he never forgot it, and he cele- 
brated it always by writing to one or 
other of his American friends. Once 
writing to Jefferson he referred to it as 
that day of which the expression was 
worthy of the event. He was addressing 
the author of the classic Declaration of 
human liberty, written, to employ one 
of the fine phrases in its opening pas- 
sages, in "a decent respect to the opin- 
ions of mankind." "We hold these 
truths to be self-evident : that all men are 
created equal; that they are endowed by 
their Creator with certain inalienable 
rights; that among these are life, liberty, 
and the pursuit of happiness; that, to 
secure these rights, governments are 
instituted among men, deriving their 
just powers from the consent of the 
governed.'' 

How these old truths blaze out today 
with a new and vivid meaning ! We were 
so accustomed to hear them that famil- 
iarity had dulled our appreciation; we 
were so accustomed to live them that 
their repetition brought only a superior 
smile to the face of sophistication. And 
now, even as we stand here, the world is 
in the agony of a war that is to determine, 
in Lincoln's words, whether nations con- 
ceived in these liberties, and dedicated 
to these propositions, are to endure. 
The right to life, the right to liberty, the 
right to happiness! These three phrases 
are the synthesis of the ideals of the 
western world; they resume in them- 
selves all that culture, all that imagina- 
tion, all that taste, all that honor, all 
that art and beauty have revealed to the 
human mind. 

Considered in relation to its time and 
construed with the Constitution and the 



72 



BRAND WHITLOCK 



Bill of Rights, that sought to apply its 
ideals to the practical affairs of life and 
government, the Declaration marked the 
highest point that the human ideal at 
that day had attained. It was the logi- 
cal conclusion of the old struggle for 
English liberty, bearing a direct relation 
to the revolution of 1649 and forming one 
of the great series of charters of human 
liberty that began with Magna Charta. 
Its stately and sonorous cadences are 
not the rigid impossibilities of doctrin- 
aires, nor the vague dreams of idealists 
and mystics, but the practical statement 
of the terms on which human beings can 
live together in political equality with a 
chance for self-expression and develop- 
ment. Every one of its concepts recalls 
the bitter lesson of some tragic experience 
in human history; those lines were written 
one after the other with the blood and 
sweat and tears of generations that had 
resisted tyrants for the right to live. In 
highly concentrated thought they repre- 
sent the conclusions that intelligent man- 
kind had reached during eighteen cen- 
turies of struggle upward out of savagery. 
Well might Lafayette write to his old 
friend Jefferson that the expression was 
worthy of the event ! 

It was by such means, and on the solid 
bases of such principles, that over the 
ugly ruins of feudalism there had arisen 
a new structure of human society. 
Slowly, with infinite toil and pain, in 
spite of many blunders and mistakes, 
Man has reared the edifice of modern 
civilization. It was imperfect as yet, 
but it was being built according to certain 
fundamental conceptions of liberty, of 
honor, of justice, words whose connota- 
tions were common to all intelligent and 
refined persons. At each step in its 
progress he paused to consolidate the 
victory of mind over matter, of reason 
over force, of the spiritual over the 
material, of the ideal over the low and 
base. He had written down the results 
of these various victories in declarations 
and constitutions and laws that embodied 
one by one the triumphs of Italian genius, 
the visions of Russian prophecy, the 



clear conceptions of French intelligence, 
and the solid achievements of English 
thought. They become the memoranda 
of the means by which liberty has been 
kept alive, that the best in man might be 
given expression, that culture might 
dwell in the earth, that there might be 
sweetness and light in life, that Man, the 
Individual, might stand up in the world 
and realize the aspirations of the poets 
and saviors of the race. 

And then suddenly, as though it had 
stepped out of the Middle Ages, autoc- 
racy, reincarnated in a military despo- 
tism with a camouflage of culture, made 
its apparition in the modern world, ready 
to tear up all the charters of human 
liberty, to destroy the work of the cen- 
turies. It challenged the validity of the 
principles on which democratic nations 
rest, and with them the noblest and most 
exalted conceptions of the human mind. 
It impugned justice, it sneered at liberty, 
it scorned compassion, it flouted honor, 
and in the name of the amazing theory 
that any deed is right if one has the brute 
force to commit it, it would take away 
what Lincoln called the last, best hope 
of man. 

It precipitated anew the old conflict 
between freedom and slavery, the old 
battle between the prince of the powers 
of the air and the prince of the powers of 
darkness. But thereby it decreed its 
own destruction, for the world has grown 
too small for autocracy and democracy to 
live in it together. The urge of democ- 
racy is irresistible; it is the destiny of 
men to be free; peoples developed in the 
light of free institutions do not turn back- 
ward to the dark. The history of the 
liberal nations of the earth all tends one 
way, toward liberty, upward toward the 
light. Read the story of valiant France, 
read the story of Belgium, ah, Belgium! 
Three years ago this summer day it was 
a smiling land of happy people whose 
every scene evoked the memory of some 
joyous canvas of Jordaens or Teniers. 
To-day it is the land of sorrow, lightened 
only by the heroism of an indomitable 
people. They have not only endured all 



BRAND WHITLOCK 



73 



the cruelties and the woes of war, but 
they have been subjected to the igno- 
minies of a mihtary occupation; they Hve 
in the presence of a great injustice, in the 
shadow of a mighty wrong. Yet those 
brave spirits back there behind that 
tragic veil come of a line of men who, ages 
since, learned what liberty is, and in their 
communal form of government have 
stubbornly, through successive alien dom- 
inations, clung to the right to rule them- 
selves. And undaunted and undismayed 
as she stood her ground at Liege, and 
along the Yser, so Belgium stands her 
ground today in every commune and at 
every hearthstone in the land. 

What was it that led Lafayette to go 
forth to a new land in the midst of war? 
He had a place at the most brilliant court 
of his time; he had youth, and wealth and 
a noble name; he had a bride, and he was 
in Paris. And yet, when he heard of the 
struggle across the sea, he said: 

'' My heart was enrolled and I had no 
other idea than to join my colors.'' 

My colors! The colors of liberty, 
whose radiant vision beckoned the loving 
and the daring in all times. He knew 
that wherever the flag of freedom was 
unfurled there was his post. Noblesse 
oblige! And the noblest, like Lafayette 
and Washington, are not content with 
liberty for themselves alone; they must 
have it for all men on equal terms, for 
they know that character can be devel- 
oped only in liberty, where the human 
soul has the right not only to live but the 
exceedingly more important right to live 
a beautiful life. 



Today, as we stand here by the tomb 
of him who in his youth went forth alone 
to join his colors across the seas, we hear 
the tread of a million youths of America, 
sons of his spirit, marching to the ships 
that bear them hither to join their colors 
on this new front of Liberty. 

They come with the same unselfish 
motive that led him forth, not for con- 
quest but for freedom, to help, as our 
President said, to make the world safe for 
democracy. They come as the brothers 
of their English blood, with the grim 
determination of their race, vowing that 
autocracy shall not tear up Magna Charta 
and the Bill of Rights, the Declaration 
of Independence and the Declaration of 
the Rights of Man. They come in the 
name of those great principles of which 
Lincoln, for us, is the incarnation, resolved 
that the dead on all the battlefields of 
liberty shall not have died in vain, that 
each nation under God shall have a new 
birth of freedom, and that government of 
the people, by the people, for»the people 
shall not perish from the earth. They 
come singing the " Battle Hymn of the 
Republic," to the blowing of the bugles 
that shall never sound retreat. They 
come bearing the hopes and the Resolu- 
tions and the faith of a whole free people, 
a mighty continent aroused, whose genius 
salutes the sister republic in the strophes 
of Walt Whitman, the poet and prophet of 
democracy : 

O Star! O ship of France, beat back and 

baffled long! 
Bear up, O smitten orb! O ship, continue on! 



WOODROW WILSON 



I 

ON THE THRESHOLD OF WAR 
Address of the President, April 2, 191 7 



Gentlemen of the Congress: 

I have called the Congress into extra- 
ordinary session because there are serious, 
very serious, choices of policy to be made, 
and made immediately, which it was 
neither right nor constitutionally per- 
missible that 1 should assume the respon- 
sibility of making. 

On the third of February last 1 officially 
laid before you the extraordinary an- 
nouncement of the Imperial German Gov- 
ernment that, on and after the first day 
of February, it was its purpose to put 
aside all restraints of law or of humanity 
and use its submarines to sink every ves- 
sel that sought to approach either the 
ports of Great Britain and Ireland or the 
western coasts of Europe or any of the 
ports controlled by the enemies of Ger- 
many within the Mediterranean. That 
had seemed to be the object of the Ger- 
man submarine warfare earlier in the war, 
but since April of last year the Imperial 
Government had somewhat restrained the 
commanders of its undersea craft, in con- 
formity with its promise then given to us 
that passenger boats should not be sunk 
and that due warning would be given to 
all other vessels which its submarines 
might seek to destroy, when no resistance 
was offered or escape attempted, and care 
taken that their crews were given at least 
a fair chance to save their lives in their 
open boats. The precautions taken were 
meagre and haphazard enough, as was 
proved in distressing instance after in- 
stance in the progress of the cruel and 
unmanly business, but a certain degree 
of restraint was observed. The new 
policy has swept every restriction aside. 
Vessels of every kind, whatever their 
flag, their character, their cargo, their 
destination, their errand, have been ruth- 



lessly sent to the bottom without warning 
and without thought of help or mercy for 
those on board, the vessels of friendly 
neutrals along with those of belligerents. 
Even hospital ships and ships carrying 
relief to the sorely bereaved and stricken 
people of Belgium, though the latter were 
provided with safe conduct through the 
proscribed areas by the German Govern- 
ment itself and were distinguished by un- 
mistakable marks of identity, have been 
sunk with the same reckless lack of com- 
passion or of principle. 

1 was for a little while unable to believe 
that such things would in fact be done by 
any government that had hitherto sub- 
scribed to the humane practices of civil- 
ized nations. International law had its 
origin in the attempt to set up some law 
which would be respected and observed 
upon the seas, where no nation had right 
of dominion and where lay the free high- 
ways of the world. By painful stage after 
stage has that law been built up, with 
meagre enough results, indeed, after all 
was accomplished that could be accom- 
plished, but always with a clear view, at 
least, of what the heart and conscience 
of mankind demanded. This minimum 
of right the German Government has 
swept aside under the plea of retaliation 
and necessity and because it had no wea- 
pons which it could use at sea except these 
which it is impossible to employ as it is 
employing them without throwing to the 
winds all scruples of humanity or of 
respect for the understandings that were 
supposed to underlie the intercourse of the 
world. 1 am not now thinking of the 
loss of property involved, immense and 
serious as that is, but only of the wanton 
and wholesale destruction of the lives 
of non-combatants,- men, women, and 



74 



WOODROW WILSON 



75 



children, engaged in pursuits which have 
always, even in the darkest periods of 
modern history, been deemed innocent 
and legitimate. Property can be paid 
for; the lives of peaceful and innocent 
people cannot be. The present German 
submarine warfare against commerce is a 
warfare against mankind. 

It is a war against all nations. Ameri- 
can ships have been sunk, American lives 
taken, in ways which it has stirred us very 
deeply to learn of, but the ships and people 
of other neutral and friendly nations have 
been sunk and overwhelmed in the waters 
in the same way. There has been no dis- 
crimination. The challenge is to all 
mankind. Each nation must decide for 
itself how it will meet it. The choice we 
make for ourselves must be made with a 
moderation of counsel and a temperate- 
ness of judgment befitting our character 
and our motives as a nation. We must 
put excited feeling away. Our motive 
will not be revenge or the victorious as- 
sertion of the physical might of the nation, 
but only the vindication of right, of hu- 
man right, of which we are only a single 
champion. 

When I addressed the Congress on the 
twenty-sixth of February last 1 thought 
that it would suffice to assert our neutral 
rights with arms, our right to use the 
seas against unlawful interference, our 
right to keep our people safe against un- 
lawful violence. But armed neutrality, 
it now appears, is impracticable. Because 
submarines are in effect outlaws when 
used as the German submarines have 
been used against merchant shipping, 
it is impossible to defend ships against 
their attacks as the law of nations has as- 
sumed that merchantmen would defend 
themselves against privateers or cruisers, 
visible craft giving chase upon the open 
sea. It is common prudence in such cir- 
cumstances, grim necessity indeed, to en- 
deavor to destroy them before they have 
shown their own intention. They must 
be dealt with upon sight, if dealt with at 
all. The German Government denies 
the right of neutrals to use arms at all 
within the areas of the sea which it has 



proscribed, even in the defense of rights 
which no modern publicist has ever before 
questioned their right to defend. The 
intimation is conveyed that the armed 
guards which we have placed on our mer- 
chant ships will be treated as beyond the 
pale of law and subject to be dealt with 
as pirates would be. Armed neutrality 
is ineffectual enough at best; in such cir- 
cumstances and in the face of such pre- 
tensions it is worse than ineffectual: it is 
likely only to produce what it was meant 
to prevent ; it is practically certain to draw 
us into the war without either the rights 
or the effectiveness of belligerents. There 
is one choice we cannot make, we are in- 
capable of making: we will not choose the 
path of submission and suffer the most 
sacred rights of our nation and our people 
to be ignored or violated. The wrongs 
against which we now array ourselves are 
no common wrongs; they cut to the very 
roots of human life. 

With a profound sense of the solemn 
and even tragical character of the step 1 
am taking and of the grave responsibilities 
which it involves, but in unhesitating 
obedience to what 1 deem my constitu- 
tional duty, 1 advise that the Congress 
declare the recent course of the Imperial 
German Government to be in fact nothing 
less than war against the government 
and people of the United States; that it 
formally accept the status of belligerent 
which has thus been thrust upon it; and 
that it take immediate steps not only to 
put the country in a more thorough state 
of defense but also to exert all its power 
and employ all its resources to bring the 
Government of the German Empire to 
terms and end the war. 

What this will involve is clear. It will 
involve the utmost practicable coopera- 
tion in counsel and action with the govern- 
ments now at war with Germany, and, 
as incident to that, the extension to 
those governments of the most liberal 
financial credits, in order that our re- 
sources may so far as possible be added 
to theirs. It will involve the organiza- 
tion and mobilization of all the material 
resources of the country to supply the 



76 



WOODROW WILSON 



materials of war and serve the incidental 
needs of the nation in the most abundant 
and yet the most economical and efficient 
way possible. It will involve the im- 
mediate full equipment of the navy in all 
respects, but particularly in supplying 
it with the best means of dealing with the 
enemy's submarines. It will involve the 
immediate addition to the armed forces 
of the United States already provided for 
by law in case of war at least five hundred 
thousand men, who should, in my opinion, 
be chosen upon the principle of universal 
liability to service, and also the authoriza- 
tion of subsequent additional increments 
of equal force so soon as they may be 
needed and can be handled in training. 
It will involve also, of course, the granting 
of adequate credits to the Government, 
sustained, I hope, so far as they can equit- 
ably be sustained by the present genera- 
tion, by well conceived taxation. 

I say sustained so far as may be equit- 
able by taxation because it seems to me 
that it would be most unwise to base the 
credits which will now be necessary en- 
tirely on money borrowed. It is our 
duty, I most respectfully urge, to protect 
our people so far as we may against the 
very serious hardships and evils which 
would be likely to arise out of the inflation 
which would be produced by vast loans. 

In carrying out the measures by which 
these things are to be accomplished we 
should keep constantly in mind the wis- 
dom of interfering as little as possible in 
our own preparation and in the equip- 
ment of our own military forces with the 
duty, — for it will be a very practical duty, 
— of supplying the nations already at war 
with Germany with the materials which 
they can obtain only from us or by our 
assistance. They are in the field and we 
should help them in every way to be ef- 
fective there. 

I shall take the liberty of suggesting, 
through the several executive depart- 
ments of the Government, for the con- 
sideration of your committees, measures 
for the accomplishment of the several 
objects I have mentioned. I hope that 
it will be your pleasure to deal with them 



as having been framed after very careful 
thought by the branch of the Govern- 
ment upon which the responsibility of 
conducting the war and safeguarding the 
nation will most directly fall. 

While we do these things, these deeply 
momentous things, let us be very clear, 
and make very clear to all the world what 
our motives and our objects are. My own 
thought has not been driven from its 
habitual and normal course by the un- 
happy events of the last two months, and 
I do not believe that the thought of the 
nation has been altered or clouded by 
them. I have exactly the same things in 
mind now that I had in mind when I ad- 
dressed the Senate on the twenty-second 
of January last; the same that 1 had in 
mind when I addressed the Congress on 
the third of February and on the twenty- 
sixth of February. Our object now, as 
then, is to vindicate the principles of 
peace and justice in the Hfe of the world 
as against selfish and autocratic power 
and to set up amongst the really free and 
self-governed peoples of the world such a 
concert of purpose and of action as will 
henceforth ensure the observance of those 
principles. Neutrality is no longer feas- 
ible or desirable where the peace of the 
world is involved and the freedom of its 
peoples, and the menace to that peace and 
freedom lies in the existence of autocratic 
governments backed by organized force 
which is controlled wholly by their will, 
not by the will of their people. We have 
seen the last of neutrality in such circum- 
stances. We are at the beginning of an 
age in which it will be insisted that the 
same standards of conduct and of re- 
sponsibility for wrong done shall be ob- 
served among nations and their govern- 
ments that are observed among the in- 
dividual citizens of civilized states. 

We have no quarrel with the German 
people. We have no feeling towards them 
but one of sympathy and friendship. It 
was not upon their impulse that their 
government acted in entering this war. 
It was not with their previous knowledge 
or approval. It was a war determined 
upon as wars used to be determined upon 



WOODROW WILSON 



77 



in the old, unhappy days when peoples 
were nowhere consulted by their rulers 
and wars were provoked and waged in the 
interest of dynasties or of little groups of 
ambitious men who were accustomed to 
use their fellow men as pawns and tools. 
Self-governed nations do not fill their 
neighbor states with spies or set the course 
of intrigue to bring about some critical 
posture of affairs which will give them 
an opportunity to strike and make con- 
quest. Such designs can be successfully 
worked out only under cover and where no 
one has the right to ask questions. Cun- 
ningly contrived plans of deception or 
aggression, carried, it may be, from gen- 
eration to generation, can be worked out 
and kept from the light only within the 
privacy of courts or behind the carefully 
guarded confidences of a narrow and 
privileged class. They are happil}' im- 
possible where public opinion commands 
and insists upon full information concern- 
ing all the nation's affairs. 

A steadfast concert for peace can never 
be maintained except by a partnership of 
democratic nations. No autocratic gov- 
ernment could be trusted to keep faith 
within it or observe its covenants. It 
must be a league of honor, a partnership 
of opinion. Intrigue would eat its vitals 
away; the plottings of inner circles who 
could plan what they would and render ac- 
count to no one would be a corruption 
seated at its very heart. Only free peoples 
can hold their purpose and their honor 
steady to a common end and prefer the 
interests of mankind to any narrow in- 
terest of their own. 

Does not ever\- American feel that as- 
surance has been added to our hope for 
the future peace of the world by the 
wonderful and heartening things that 
have been happening within the last few 
weeks in Russia? Russia was known b\- 
those who knew it best to have been al- 
ways in fact democratic at heart, in all the 
vital habits of her thought, in all the in- 
timate relationships of her people that 
spoke their natural instinct, their habi- 
tual attitude towards life. The auto- 
cracy that crowned the summit of her 



political structure, long as it had stood 
and terrible as was the reality of its 
power, was not in fact Russian in origin, 
character, or purpose; and now it has 
been shaken off and the great, generous 
Russian people have been added in all 
their naive majesty and might to the 
forces that are fighting for freedom in the 
world, for justice, and for peace. Here is 
a fit partner for a League of Honor. 

One of the things that has served to 
convince us that the Prussian autocracy 
was not and could never be our friend is 
that from the very outset of the present 
war it has filled our unsuspecting com- 
munities and even our offices of govern- 
ment with spies and set criminal intrigues 
ever}'where afoot against our national 
unity of counsel, our peace within and 
without, our industries and our com- 
merce. Indeed it is now evident that its 
spies were here even before the war be- 
gan; and it is unhappily not a matter of 
conjecture but a fact proved in our courts 
of justice that the intrigues which have 
more than once come perilously near to 
disturbing the peace and dislocating the 
industries of the country have been car- 
ried on at the instigation, with the sup- 
port, and even under the personal direc- 
tion of official agents of the Imperial 
Government accredited to the Govern- 
ment of the United States. Even in 
checking these things and trying to ex- 
tirpate them we have sought to put the 
most generous interpretation possible 
upon them because we knew that their 
source lay, not in any hostile feeling or 
purpose of the German people towards 
us (who were, no doubt, as ignorant of 
them as we ourselves were), but only in 
the selfish designs of a Government that 
did what it pleased and told its people 
nothing. But they have played their 
part in serv'ing to convince us at last that 
that Government entertains no real friend- 
ship for us and means to act against our 
peace and security at its convenience. 
That it means to stir up enemies against 
us at our very doors the intercepted note 
to the German Minister at Mexico City 
is eloquent evidence. 



78 



WOODROW WILSON 



We are accepting this challenge of hos- 
tile purpose because we know that in such 
a government, following such methods, 
we can never have a friend; and that in 
the presence of its organized power, al- 
ways lying in wait to accomplish we 
know not what purpose, there can be no 
assured security for the democratic gov- 
ernments of the world. We are now 
about to accept gage of battle with this 
natural foe to liberty and shall, if neces- 
sary, spend the whole force of the nation 
to check and nullify its pretensions and 
its power. We are glad, now that we 
see the facts with no veil of false pretence 
about them, to fight thus for the ultimate 
peace of the world and for the liberation 
of its peoples, the German peoples in- 
cluded : for the rights of nations great and 
small and the privilege of men everywhere 
to choose their way of life and of obedi- 
ence. The world must be made safe for 
democracy. Its peace- must be planted 
upon the tested foundations of political 
liberty. We have no selfish ends to 
serve. We desire no conquest, no domin- 
ion. We seek no indemnities for our- 
selves, no material compensation for the 
sacrifices we shall freely make. We are 
but one of the champions of the rights of 
mankind. We shall be satisfied when 
those rights have been made as secure as 
the faith and the freedom of nations can 
make them. 

Just because we fight without rancor 
and without selfish object, seeking nothing 
for ourselves but what we shall wish to 
share with all free peoples, we shall, I feel 
confident, conduct our operations as bel- 
ligerents without passion and ourselves 
observe with proud punctilio the prin- 
ciples of right and of fair play we profess 
to be fighting for. 

1 have said nothing of the govern- 
ments allied with the Imperial Govern- 
ment of Germany because they have not 
made war upon us or challenged us to 
defend our right and our honor. The 
Austro-Hungarian Government has, in- 
deed, avowed its unqualified endorse- 
ment and acceptance of the reckless and 
lawless submarine warfare adopted now 



without disguise by the Imperial German 
Government, and it has therefore not 
been possible for this Government to re- 
ceive Count Tarnowski, the Ambassador 
recently accredited to this Government 
by the Imperial and Royal Government 
of Austria-Hungary; but that Govern- 
ment has not actually engaged in war- 
fare against citizens of the United States 
on the seas, and 1 take the liberty, for 
the present at least, of postponing a dis- 
cussion of our relations with the authori- 
ties at Vienna. We enter this war only 
where we are clearly forced into it because 
there are no other means of defending 
our rights. 

It will be all the easier for us to conduct 
ourselves as belligerents in a high spirit 
of right and fairness because we act with- 
out animus, not in enmity towards a 
people or with the desire to bring any in- 
jury or disadvantage upon them, but 
only in armed opposition to an irrespon- 
sible government which has thrown aside 
all considerations of humanity and of 
right and is running amuck. We are, 
let me say again, the sincere friends of 
the German people, and shall desire noth- 
ing so much as the early reestablishment 
of intimate relations of mutual advantage 
between us, — however hard it may be for 
them, for the time being, to believe that 
this is spoken from our hearts. We have 
borne with their present government 
through all these bitter months because 
of that friendship, — exercising a patience 
and forbearance which would otherwise 
have been impossible. We shall, happily, 
still have an opportunity to prove that 
friendship in our daily attitude and ac- 
tions towards the millions of men and 
women of German birth and native sym- 
pathy who live amongst us and share our 
life, and we shall be proud to prove it 
towards all who are in fact loyal to their 
neighbors and to the Government in the 
hour of test. They are, most of them, as 
true and loyal Americans as if they had 
never known any other fealty or allegi- 
ance. They will be prompt to stand with 
us in rebuking and restraining the few 



WOODROW WILSON 



79 



who may be of a different mind and pur- 
pose. If there should be disloyalty, it 
will be dealt with with a firm hand of stern 
repression; but, if it lifts its head at all, 
it will lift it only here and there and with- 
out countenance except from a lawless 
and malignant few. 

It is a distressing and oppressive duty, 
Gentlemen of the Congress, which I have 
performed in thus addressing you. There 
are, it may be, many months of fiery trial 
and sacrifice ahead of us. It is a fearful 
thing to lead this great peaceful people in- 
to war, into the most terrible and disas- 
trous of all wars, civilization itself seem- 
ing to be in the balance. But the right 
is more precious than peace, and we shall 
fight for the things which we have always 



carried nearest our hearts, — for democ- 
racy, for the right of those who submit 
to authority to have a voice in their own 
governments, for the rights and liberties 
of small nations, for a universal dominion 
of right by such a concert of free peoples 
as shall bring peace and safety to all na- 
tions and make the world itself at last 
free. To such a task we can dedicate 
our lives and our fortunes, everything 
that we are and everything that we have, 
with the pride of those who know that the 
day has come when America is privi- 
leged to spend her blood and her might for 
the principles that gave her birth and 
happiness and the peace which she has 
treasured. God helping her, she can do 
no other. 



II 



OUR PURPOSE IN THE WAR 



Extract from Address of President Wilson to a Joint Session of the Two 
Houses of Congress, December 4, 191 7 



If 1 have overlooked anything that 
ought to be done for the more effective 
conduct of the war, your own counsels 
will supply the omission. What 1 am 
perfectly clear about is that in the present 
session of the Congress our whole atten- 
tion and energy should be concentrated 
on the vigorous, rapid, and successful 
prosecution of the great task of winning 
the war. 

We can do this with all the greater 
zeal and enthusiasm because we know 
that for us this is a war of high principle, 
debased by no selfish ambition of con- 
quest or spoliation; because we know, and 
all the world knows, that we have been 
forced into it to save the very institutions 
we live under from corruption and de- 
struction. The purposes of the Central 
Powers strike straight at the very heart 
of everything we believe in; their methods 
of warfare outrage every principle of 
humanity and of knightly honor; their 
intrigue has corrupted the very thought 
and spirit of many of our people; their 



sinister and secret diplomacy has sought 
to take our very territory away from us 
and disrupt the Union of the States. Our 
safety would be at an end, our honor for- 
ever sullied and brought into contempt 
werfe we to permit their triumph. They 
are striking at the very existence of 
democracy and liberty. 

It is because it is for us a war of high, 
disinterested purpose, in which all the 
free peoples of the world are banded to- 
gether for the vindication of right, a war 
for the preservation of our nation and of 
all that it has held dear of principle and 
of purpose, that we feel ourselves doubly 
constrained to propose for its outcome 
only that which is righteous and of irre- 
proachable intention, for our foes as well 
as for our friends. The cause being just 
and holy, the settlement must be of like 
motive and quality. For this we can 
fight, but for nothing less noble or less 
worthy of our traditions. For this cause 
we entered the war and for this cause will 
we battle until the last gun is fired. 



8o 



WOODROW WILSON 



I have spoken plainly because this 
seems to me the time when it is most 
necessary to speak plainly, in order that 
all the world may know that even in the 
heat and ardor of the struggle and when 
our whole thought is of carrying the war 
through to its end we have not forgotten 
any ideal or principle for which the name 
of America has been held in honor among 



the nations and for which it has been our 
glory to contend in the great generations 
that went before us. A supreme moment 
of history has come. The eyes of the 
people have been opened and they see. 
The hand of God is laid upon the nations. 
He will show them favor, I devoutly 
believe, only if they rise to the clear 
heights of His own justice and mercy. 



HI 

THE PROGRAM OF THE WORLD'S PEACE 
Extract from Address of January 8, 1918 



We entered this war because violations 
of right had occurred which touched us to 
the quick and made the life of our own 
people impossible unless they were cor- 
rected and the world secured once for all 
against their recurrence. What we de- 
mand in this war, therefore, is nothing 
peculiar to ourselves. It is that the 
world be made fit and safe to live in ; and 
particularly that it be made safe for every 
peace-loving nation which, like our own, 
wishes to live its own life, determine its 
own institutions, be assured of justice and 
fair dealing by the other peoples of the 
world as against force and selfish ag- 
gression. All the peoples of the werld 
are in effect partners in this interest, and 
for our own part we see very clearly that 
unless justice be done to others it will not 
be done to us. The program of the 
world's peace, therefore, is our program; 
and that program, the only possible 
program, as we see it, is this: 

I. Open covenants of peace, openly ar- 
rived at, after which there shall be no 
private international understandings of 
any kind, but diplomacy shall proceed 
always frankly and in the public view. 

II. Absolute freedom of navigation 
upon the seas, outside territorial waters, 
alike in peace and in war, except as the 
seas may be closed in whole or in part by 
international action for the enforcement 
of international covenants. 

HI. The removal, so far as possible, of 



all economic barriers and the establish- 
ment of an equality of trade conditions 
among all the nations consenting to the 
peace and associating themselves for its 
maintenance. 

IV. Adequate guarantees given and 
taken that national armaments will be 
reduced to the lowest point consistent 
with domestic safety. 

V. A free, open-minded, and absolutely 
impartial adjustment of all colonial 
claims, based upon a strict observance 
of the principle that in determining all 
such questions of sovereignty the interests 
of the populations concerned must have 
equal weight with the equitable claims 
of the government whose title is to be 
determined. 

VI. The evacuation of all Russian 
territory and such a settlement of all 
questions affecting Russia as will secure 
the best and freest co-operation of the 
other nations of the world in obtaining 
for her an unhampered and unembar- 
rassed opportunity for the independent 
determination of her own political devel- 
opment and national policy and assure 
her of a sincere welcoming into the so- 
ciety of free nations under institutions of 
her own choosing; and, more than a wel- 
come, assistance also of every kind that 
she may need and may herself desire. 
The treatment accorded Russia by her 
sister nations in the months to come will 
be the acid test of their good will, of their 



WOODROW WILSON 



8i 



comprehension of her needs as distin- 
guished from their own interests, and of 
their intelligent and unselfish s\mpath\-. 

VII. Belgium, the whole world vvill 
agree, must be evacuated and restored, 
without any attempt to limit the sover- 
eignty which she enjoys in common with 
all other free nations. No other single 
act will serve as this will ser\'e to restore 
confidence among the nations in the laws 
which the>- have themselves set and de- 
termined for the government of their rela- 
tions %Wth one another. Without this 
healing act the whole structure and valid- 
ity of international law is forever im- 
paired. 

VI II. All French territor>- should be 
freed and the invaded portions restored, 
and the \sTong done to France b\' Prussia 
in 1871 in the matter of Aisace-L ; t 
which has unsettled the peace of t 

for nearl>' fifty years, should be righted, 
in order that peace may once more be 
made secure in the interest of all. 

IX. A readjustment of the frontiers 
of Italy should be effected along clearl}" 
recognizable lines of nation al it \. 

X. The peoples of Austria-Hungary, 
whose place among the nations we wish 
to see safeguarded and assured, should be 
accorded the freest opportunity of auton- 
omous development. 

XL Rumania, Serbia, and Montenegro 
should be evacuated; occupied territories 
restored; Serbia accorded free and secure 
access to the sea; and the relations of the 
several Balkan states to one another de- 
termined by friendly counsel along his- 
torically established lines of allegiance 
and nationalit>-; and international guar- 
antees of the political and economic in- 
dependence and territorial integrit\- of 
the several Balkan states should be en- 
tered into. 

XI 1. The Turkish portions of the 
present Ottoman Empire should be as- 
sured a secure sovereignty, but the other 
nationalities which are now under Turkish 
rule should be assured an undoubted 
security of life and an absolutelv un- 
molested opportunit\' of autonomous 
development, and the Dardenelles should 



be permanently opened as a free passage to 
the ships and commerce of all nations 
under international guarantees. 

XI I I. An independent Polish state 
should be erected which should include 
the territories inhabited by indisputably 
Polish populations, which should be as- 
sured a free and secure access to the sea, 
and whose political and economic inde- 
pendence and territorial integrity' should 
be guaranteed by international covenant. 

XIV. A general association of nations 
must be formed under specific covenants 
for the purpose of affording mutual guar- 
antees of political independence and 
territorial integrity to great and small 
states alike. 

In regard to these essential rectifications 
of wrong and assertions of right we feel 
'5 to be intimate partners of all 
trnments and peoples associated 
: against the ImperiaHsts. We 

c:. : e separated in interest or divided 
in rur: ise. We stand together until the 
end. 

For such arrangements and covenants 
we are v:\.[:r.i :: f ^ht and to continue 
to fight until tne} are achieved; but only 
because we wish the right to prevail 
and desire a just and stable peace such 
as can be secured only by removing the 
chief provocations to war, which this 
program does remove. We have no jeal- 
ousy of German greatness, and there is 
nothing in this program that impairs it. 
We grudge her no achievement or dis- 
tinction of learning or of pacific enterprise 
such as have made her record ver\' bright 
and ver>^ enviable. We do not \^ish to 
injure her or to block in any way her legiti- 
mate influence or power. We do not wish 
to fight her either with arms or with 
hostile arrangements of trade if she is 
willing to associate herself with us and the 
other peace-loving nations of the world 
in covenants of justice and law and fair 
dealing. We wish her only to accept a 
place of equalitx' among the peoples of 
the world, — the new^ world in which we 
now live. — instead of a place of master\'. 

Neither do we presume to suggest to 



82 



WOODROW WILSON 



her any alteration or modification of her 
institutions. But it is necessary, we must 
frankly say, and necessary as a prelim- 
inary to any intelligent dealings with her 
on our part, that we should know whom 
her spokesmen speak for when they speak 
to us, whether for the Reichstag majority 
or for the military party and the men 
whose creed is imperial domination. 

We have spoken now, surely, in terms 
too concrete to admit of any further doubt 
or question. An evident principle runs 
through the whole program 1 have out- 
lined. It is the principle of justice to all 
peoples and nationalities, and their right 



to live on equal terms of liberty and 
safety with one another, whether they be 
strong or weak. Unless this principle be 
made its foundation, no part of the struc- 
ture of international justice can stand. 
The people of the United States could 
act upon no other principle; and to the 
vindication of this principle they are 
ready to devote their lives, their honor, 
and everything that they possess. The 
moral climax of this the culminating and 
final war for human liberty has come, 
and they are ready to put their own 
strength, their own highest purpose, their 
own integrity and devotion to the test. 



IV 

AFTER A YEAR OF WAR 

President Wilson's Speech in Baltimore, April 6, 1918 



Fellow Citizens: 

This is the anniversary of our accept- 
ance of Germany's challenge to fight for 
our right to live and be free, and for the 
sacred rights of freemen everywhere. 
The nation is awake. There is no need to 
call to it. We know what the war must 
cost, our utmost sacrifice, the lives of our 
fittest men, and, if need be, all that we 
possess. . . . 

1 call you to witness, my fellow coun- 
trymen, that at no stage of this terrible 
business have 1 judged the purposes of 
Germany intemperately. 1 should be 
ashamed in the presence of afi^airs so grave 
so fraught with the destinies of mankind 
throughout all the world, to speak with 
truculence, to use the weak language of 
hatred or vindictive purpose. We must 
judge as we would be judged. I have 
sought to learn the objects Germany has 
in this war from the mouths of her own 
spokesmen, and to deal as frankly with 
them as 1 wished them to deal with me. 
1 have laid bare our own ideals,, our own 
purposes, without reserve or doubtful 
phrase, and have asked them to say as 
plainly what it is that they seek. 

We have ourselves proposed no injus- 



tice, no aggression. We are ready, when- 
ever the final reckoning is made, to be 
just to the German people, deal fairly 
with the German power, as with all others. 
There can be no difi'erence between 
peoples in the final judgment, if it is in- 
deed to be a righteous judgment. To 
propose anything but justice, even-handed 
and dispassionate justice, to Germany at 
any time, whatever the outcome of the 
war, would be to renounce and dishonor 
our own cause, for we ask nothing that 
we are not willing to accord. 

It has been with this thought that I 
have sought to learn from those who spoke 
for Germany whether it was justice or 
dominion and the execution of their own 
will upon the other nations of the world 
that the German leaders were seeking. 
They have answered — answered in un- 
mistakable terms. They have avowed 
that it was not justice, but dominion and 
the unhindered execution of their own will. 
The avowal has not come from Germany's 
statesmen . 1 1 has come from her military 
leaders, who are her real rulers. . . . 

Their purpose is, undoubtedly, to make 
all the Slavic peoples, all the free and am- 
bitious nations of the Baltic Peninsula, all 



WOODROW WILSON 



83 



the lands that Turkey has dominated and 
misruled, subject to their will and ambi- 
tion, and build upon that dominion an 
empire of force upon which they fancy 
that they can then erect an empire of gain 
and commercial supremacy — an empire 
as hostile to the Americas as to the Europe 
which it will overawe — an empire which 
will ultimately master Persia, India, and 
the peoples of the Far East. 

In such a program our ideals, the ideals 
of justice and humanity and libert)', the 
principle of the free self-determination of 
nations, upon which all the modern world 
insists, can play no part. They are re- 
jected for the ideals of power, for the 
principle that the strong must rule the 
weak, that trade must follow the flag, 
whether those to whom it is taken welcome 
it or not, that the peoples of the world 
are to be made subject to the patronage 
and overlordship of those who have the 
power to enforce it. 

That program once carried out, Amer- 
ica and all who care or dare to stand with 
her must arm and prepare themselves to 
contest the mastery of the world — a 
mastery in which the rights of common 
men, the rights of women and of all who 
are w^eak, must for the time being be 
trodden underfoot and disregarded and 
the old, age-long struggle for freedom and 
right begin again at its beginning. Every 
thing that America has lived for and loved 
and grown great to vindicate and bring to 
a glorious realization will have fallen in 
utter ruin and the gates of mercy will 
have once more pitilessly shut upon man- 
kind! 

The thing is preposterous and impos- 
sible; and }'et is not that what the whole 
course and action of the German armies 
has meant wherever they have moved? 
I do not wish, even in this moment of 



utter disillusionment; to judge harshly 
or unrighteously. I judge only what the 
German arms have accom.plished with 
unpit\'ing thoroughness throughout every 
fair region they have touched. 

What, then, are we to do? For my- 
self, 1 am ready, read\' still, read\' even 
now, to discuss a fair and just and honest 
peace at any time that it is sincerely pur- 
posed — a peace in which the strong and 
the weak shall fare alike. But the an- 
swer, when I proposed such a peace, came 
from the German commanders in Russia 
and I cannot mistake the meaning of the 
answer. 

1 accept the challenge. I know that 
)'ou accept it. All the world will know 
that you accept it. It will appear in the 
utter sacrifice and self-forgetfulness with 
which we shall give all that we love and all 
that we have to redeem the world and 
make it fit for freemen like ourselves to 
live in. This now is the meaning of all 
that we do. Let everything that we say, 
my fellow-countrymen, everything that 
we henceforth plan and accomplish, ring 
true to this response till the majesty and 
might of our concerted power shall fill the 
thought and utterl>' defeat the force of 
those who flout and misprize what we 
honor and hold dear. 

Germany has once more said that force, 
and force alone, shall decide whether 
justice and peace shall reign in the af- 
fairs of men, whether right as America 
conceives it or dominion as she conceives 
it shall determine the destinies of man- 
kind. There is, therefore, but one re- 
sponse possible from us: Force, force to 
the utmost, force without stint or limit, 
the righteous and triumphant force which 
shall make right the law of the world and 
cast every selfish dominion dow^n in the 
dust. 



84 



WOODROW WILSON 



THE PRESIDENTS SPEECH AT MOUNT VERNON, JULY 4, 1918 



Gentlemen of the Diplomatic Corps and My 

Fellow-Citiiens: 

I am happy to draw apart with you to 
this quiet place of old counsel in order to 
speak a little of the meaning of this day 
of our nation's independence. The place 
seems very still and remote. It is as 
serene and untouched by the hurry of the 
world as it was in those great days long 
ago when General Washington was here 
and held leisurely conference with the 
men who were to be associated with him 
in the creation of a nation. From these 
gentle slopes they looked out upon the 
world and saw it whole, saw it with the 
light of the future upon it, saw it with 
modern eyes that turned away from a 
past which men of liberated spirits could 
no longer endure. It is for that reason 
that we cannot feel, even here, in the im- 
mediate presence of this sacred tomb, that 
this is a place of death. It was a place of 
achievement. A great promise that was 
meant for all mankind was here given plan 
and reality. The associations by which 
we are here surrounded are the inspiriting 
associations of that noble death which is 
only a glorious consummation. From 
this green hillside we also ought to be able 
to see with comprehending eyes the world 
that lies about us and should conceive 
anew the purpose that must set men free. 

It is significant — significant of their 
own character and purpose and of the in- 
fluences they were setting afoot — that 
Washington and his associates, like the 
Barons at Runnymede, spoke and acted, 
not for a class, but for a people. It has 
been left for us to see to it that it shall be 
understood that they spoke and acted, not 
for a single people only, but for all man- 
kind. They were thinking not of them- 
selves and of the material interests which 
centered in the little groups of landhold- 
ers and merchants and men of affairs with 
whom they were accustomed to act, in 
Virginia and the colonies to the north and 
south of her, but of a people which wished 



to be done with classes and special interest 
and the authority of men whom they had 
not themselves chosen to rule over them. 
They entertained no private purpose, de- 
sired no peculiar privilege. They were 
consciously planning that men of every 
class should be free and America a place 
to which men out of every nation mignt 
resort who wished to share with them the 
rights and privileges of free men. And 
we take our cue from them — do we not? 
We intend what they intended. We here 
in America believe our participation in 
this present war to be only the fruitage of 
what they planted. Our case differs from 
theirs only in this, that it is our inesti- 
mable privilege to concert with men out 
of every nation who shall make not only 
the liberties of America secure but the 
liberties of every other people as well. 
We are happy in the thought that we are 
permitted to do what they would have 
done had they been in our place. There 
must now be settled, once for all, what 
was settled for America in the great age 
upon whose inspiration we draw today. 
This is surely a fitting place from which 
calmly to look out upon our task, that 
we may fortify our spirits for its accom- 
plishment. And this is the appropriate 
place from which to avow, alike to the 
friends who look on and to the friends with 
whom we have the happiness to be asso- 
ciated in action, the faith and purpose 
with which we act. 

This, then, is our conception of the 
great struggle in which we are engaged. 
The plot is written plain upon every 
scene and every act of the supreme trag- 
edy. On the one hand stand the peoples 
of the world— not only the peoples ac- 
tually engaged, but many others, also, 
who suffer under mastery but cannot act; 
peoples of many races and in every part 
of the world — the people of stricken Rus- 
sia still, among the rest, though they are 
for the moment unorganized and help- 
less. Opposed to them, masters of many 



WOODROW WILSON 



85 



armies, stand an isolated, friendless 
group of Governments, who speak no 
common purpose, but only selfish ambi- 
tions of their own, by which none can 
profit but themselves, and whose peoples 
are fuel in their hands; Governments 
which fear their people, and yet are for 
the time their sovereign lords, making 
every choice for them and disposing of 
their lives and fortunes as the\- will, as 
well as of the lives and fortunes of every 
people who fall under their power — Gov- 
ernments clothed with the strange trap- 
pings and the primitive authority of an 
age that is altogether alien and hostile 
to our own. The Past and the Present 
are in deadly grapple, and the peoples of 
the world are being done to death between 
them. 

There can be but one issue. The settle- 
ment must be final. There can be no 
compromise. No halfway decision would 
be tolerable. No halfway decision is 
conceivable. These are the ends for 
which the associated peoples of the world 
are fighting and which must be conceded 
them before there can be peace: 

I. — The destruction of every arbitrary 
power anywhere that can separate!}-, 
secretly, and of its single choice disturb 
the peace of the world; or, if it cannot be 
presently destroyed, at the least its re- 
duction to virtual impotence. 

II. — ^The settlement of every question, 
whether of territory, of sovereignty, of 
economic arrangement, or of political re- 
lationship, upon the basis of the free 
acceptance of that settlement by the 
people immediately concerned, and not 
upon the basis of the material interest or 
advantage of any other nation or people 
which may desire a difl'erent settlement 
for the sake of its own exterior influence 
or mastery. 

III. — The consent of all nations to be 
governed in their conduct toward each 
other by the same principles of honor and 
of respect fpr the common law of civilized 
society that govern the individual citi- 
zens of all modern States in their rela- 
tions with one another; to the end that all 



promises and covenants may be sacredly 
observed, no private plots or conspiracies 
hatched, no selfish injuries wrought with 
impunity, and a mutual trust established 
upon the handsome foundation of a mu- 
tual respect for right. 

IV. — The establishment of an organi- 
zation of peace which shall make it cer- 
tain that the combined power of free 
nations will check every invasion of right 
and serve to make peace and justice the 
more secure by affording a definite tri- 
bunal of opinion to which all must sub- 
mit and b>' which ever)' international 
readjustment that cannot be amicably 
agreed upon by the peoples directly con- 
cerned shall be sanctioned. 

These great objects can be put into a 
single sentence. What we seek is the 
reign of law, based upon the consent of 
the governed and sustained by the or- 
ganized opinion of mankind. 

These great ends cannot be achieved by 
debating and seeking to reconcile and 
accommodate what statesmen may wish 
with their projects for balances of power 
and of national opportunity. They can 
be realized only by the determination of 
what the thinking peoples of the world 
desire, with their longing hope for justice 
and for social freedom and opportunity. 

I can fancy that the air of this place 
carries the accents of such principles with 
a peculiar kindness. Here were started 
forces which the great nation against 
which they were primarily directed at 
first regarded as a revolt against its right- 
ful authority, but which it has long since 
seen to have been a step in the liberation 
of its own people as well as of the people 
of the United States; and 1 stand here now 
to speak — speak proudly and with con- 
fident hope — of the spread of this revolt, 
this liberation, to the great stage of the 
world itself! The blinded rulers of Prus- 
sia have roused forces they knew little of — 
forces which, once roused, can never be 
crushed to earth again; for they have at 
their heart an inspiration and a purpose 
which are deathless and of the very stuff 
of triumph! 



OWEN WISTER 

From "The Pentecost of Calamity"* 



And what of ourselves in this well-nigh 
world-wide cloudburst? 

Every man has walked at night through 
gloom where objects were dim and hard 
to see, when suddenly a flash of lightning 
has struck the landscape livid. Trees 
close by, fences far off, houses, fields, 
animals and the faces of people — all 
things stand transfixed by a piercing 
distinctness. So now, in this thunder- 
storm of war, each nation and every 
man and woman is searchingly revealed 
by the perpetual lightnings. Whatever 
this American nation is, whatever aspect, 
noble or ignoble, our Democracy shows 
in the glare of this cataclysm, is even 
already engraved on the page of History, 
will be the portrait of the United States. 

We have yet to find our greater selves. 
We have also yet to realize that Europe, 
since the Spanish War, has counted us in 
the concert of great nations far more than 
we have counted ourselves. . . . 

To speak of the Old World and the 
New World is to speak in a dead language. 
The world is one. All humanity is in 
the same boat. The passengers multiply, 
but the boat remains the same size. 
And people who rock the boat must be 
stopped by force. America can no more 
separate itself from the destiny of Europe 
than it can escape the natural laws of the 
universe. 

Because we declared political inde- 
pendence, does any one still harbor the 
delusion that we are independent of the 



acts and fortunes of monarchs? If so, 
let him consider only these four events: 
In 1492 a Spanish Queen financed a sailor 
named Columbus — and Europe reached 
out and laid a hand on this hemisphere. 
In 1685 a French King revoked an edict — 
and thousands of Huguenots enriched our 
stock. In 1803 a French consul, to spite 
Britain, sold us some land — it was pretty 
much everything west of the Mississippi. 
One might well have supposed we were 
independent of the heir of Austria. In 
1 914 they killed him, and Europe fell to 
pieces — and that fall is shaking our ship 
of state from stem to stern. There may 
be some citizens down in the hold who 
do not know it — among a hundred mil- 
lion people you cannot expect to have no 
imbeciles. 

Thus, from Palos, in 1492, to Sarajevo, 
in 1914, the hand of Europe has drawn 
us ever and ever closer. 

Yes, indeed; we are all in the same boat. 
Europe has never forgotten some words 
spoken here once: "That government of 
the people, by the people, for the people, 
shall not perish from the earth/' She 
waited to hear us repeat that in some 
form when The Hague conventions we 
signed were torn to scraps of paper. 
Perhaps nothing save calamity will teach 
us what Europe is thankful to have 
learned again — that some things are 
worse than war, and that you can pay too 
high a price for peace; but that you can- 
not pay too high a price for the finding 
and keeping of your own soul. 



* This volume has been published in English, Russian, German, Dutch, French and Italian. 



86 



GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY 

EDITH CAVELL 

The world hath its own dead; great motions start 
In human breasts, and make for them a place 
In that hushed sanctuary of the race 

Where every day men come, kneel and depart. 

Of them, O English nurse, henceforth thou art, 
A name to pray on, and to all a face 
Of household consecration: such His grace 

Whose universal dwelling is the heart ! 

Oh, gentle hands that soothed the soldier's brow 
And knew no service save of Christ, the Lord! 
Thy country now is all humanity! 
How like a flower thy womanhood doth show 
In the harsh scything of the German sword, 
And beautifies the world that saw it die! 



Scribners Magapne, 1916. 



A SONG OF SUNRISE 
On the morning of the Russian Revolution 

To those who drink the golden mist 

Whereon the world's horizons rest. 
Who teach the peoples to resist 

The terrors of the human breast ! — 
By burning stake and prison-camp 

They lead the march of man divine. 
Above whose head the sacred lamp 

Of hberty doth blaze and shine: 
O'er blood and tears and nameless woe 

They hail far off the dawning light; 
Through faith in them the nations go, 

Smit by the sun in deepest night; — 
Honor to them from East to West 

Be on the shouting earth today! 
Holy their memory! Sweet their rest ! 

Who fill the skies with freedom's day. 



N. Y. Tribune, March 20, 191 7. 



87 



GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY 



ON THE ITALIAN FRONT 
1916 

" I will die cheering, if 1 needs must die; 

So shall my last breath write upon my lips 

yiva Italia! when my spirit slips 
Down the great darkness from the mountain sky; 
And those who shall behold me where I lie 

Shall murmur, 'Look you! how his spirit dips 

From glory into glory ! the eclipse 
Of death is vanquished! Lo, his victor-cry!' 

"Live, thou, upon my hps, Italia mine, — 
The sacred death-cry of my frozen clay ! 

Let thy dear light from my dead body shine 
And to the passer-by thy message say: 

*Ecco! though Heaven has made my skies divine, 
Thy sons' love sanctifies my soil for aye!'" 



Boston Herald, March 25, 1917. 



Note. — The editors of this collection are proud to include in it the tvio poems which follow, written dur- j 

ing the Qvil War by members of the Academy. Mr. Hay's touching lyric and Mrs. Howe's immortal ' 

hymn were constant and piDfound sources of patriotic inspiration to soldiers and civilians in the recent ] 

strangle. i 



JOHN HAY* 
WHEN THE B0V5 COME HOME 

There's a happ>' time coming when the bo>s come home; 
There's a glorious day coming when the boys come home; 

We will end the dreadful stor>' 

Of the battle dark and gon.- 

In a sunburst of glor}', 

When the boys come home. 

The da\' ^i^ill seem brighter when the bo>s come home. 

And our hearts uill be lighter when the boys come home; 
Wives and sweethearts v»ill press them 
In their arms and caress them, 
And pray God to bless them, 
\\"hen the boys come home. 

The thin ranks will be proudest when the bo\'5 come home, 
And our cheer ^ill ring the loudest when the boys come home; 

The full ranks v,ill be shattered, 

And the bright arms v,ill be battered. 

And the battle-standards tattered, 
\\'hen the bo>-s come home. 

Their ba\"onets may be rust>' when the bo\s come home, 
And their uniforms be dusty when the boys come home; 

But all shall see the traces 

Of the battle's royal graces 

In the brown and bearded faces, 
When the bo>s come home. 

Our love shall go to meet them when the bo>s come home, 
To bless them and to greet them when the boys come home; 

.\nd the fame of their endeavor 

Time and change shall not dissever 

From the nation's heart for ever, I 

When the bo}-s come home. I 

i 
*Mr. Hay died July i, 1905. ! 

I 



89 ! 



JULIA WARD HOWE* 

BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC 

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord; 
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored; 
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword; 
His truth is marching on. 

I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps; 
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps; 
I can see His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps: 
His day is marching on. 

I have read a fiery gospel, writ in burnished rows of steel : 
"As ye deal with My contemners, so with you My grace shall deal; 
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with His heel, 
Since God is marching on.'* 

He hath sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat; 
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat; 
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet! 
Our God is marching on. 

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, 
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me; 
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free. 
While God is marching on. 

Mrs. Howe, a member of the Academy, died October 17, 19 10. 



90 



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